Al­most half of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pop­u­la­tion could be at big risk for con­tract­ing COVID-19.

This is be­cause half of the pop­u­la­tion has di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion and these peo­ple and those in 10 oth­er cat­e­gories—in­clud­ing the el­der­ly—are at high risk for the virus and must strict­ly prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing and oth­er mea­sures.

Fig­ures on di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion lev­els and oth­er cat­e­gories of Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NCDS) were giv­en at yes­ter­day’s dai­ly me­dia brief­ing by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Dr Neil Bhag­wan­dass (nephrol­o­gist/act­ing head of med­i­cine at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal). Both warned about the im­pact and in­creased COVID risk for peo­ple with NCDs. Bhag­wan­dass list­ed 12 cat­e­gories of peo­ple at high risk, not­ing there are many peo­ple in the var­i­ous cat­e­gories in T&T.

“They’re at high risk for rav­ages of COVID-19. So­cial mit­i­ga­tion prac­tices, in­clud­ing iso­la­tion, dis­tanc­ing et cetera, must be stressed to pre­vent se­vere out­breaks among the NCD pop­u­la­tion. The virus is more dan­ger­ous to such peo­ple and it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant for the el­der­ly for in­stance to iso­late them­selves. Stay at home,” Bhag­wan­dass said.

He said hy­per­ten­sion, which is very com­mon among the pop­u­la­tion, is cit­ed as a ma­jor risk fac­tor for com­pli­ca­tions if COVID-19 aris­es.

Di­a­betes, which com­pro­mis­es the im­mune sys­tem, is al­so in a cat­e­go­ry for high risk of com­pli­ca­tions with the virus and he said any stress on di­a­bet­ic sys­tems will push a per­son’s di­a­betes out of con­trol. Di­a­bet­ics must en­sure the use of med­ica­tions to pre­vent el­e­vat­ed sug­ar lev­els and mon­i­tor blood sug­ar every four hours, al­so con­tact­ing doc­tors, he said.

Deyals­ingh said min­istry es­ti­mates are that 0.5 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion—266,000 peo­ple —have di­a­betes. He said that was the known fig­ure, “but this is an un­der­es­ti­ma­tion as many have it and don’t know.”

Known es­ti­mates for hy­per­ten­sion are that 23.6 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion—341,000—have that dis­ease.

Deaths at­trib­uted to di­a­betes in T&T are 14 per cent, those for car­dio-vas­cu­lar is­sues10 per cent and those due to heart con­di­tions are 25 per cent, he ex­plained. Can­cer-re­lat­ed deaths are at 13 per cent.

For­mer health min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan had launched a dri­ve to get healthy and re­duce NCDS. Deyals­ingh said the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion had al­so signed con­ven­tions on NCDS and the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment, since 2015, had been sound­ing the alarm al­so. He said the ban­ning of soft drinks in schools re­sult­ed in a 25 per cent re­duc­tion in con­sump­tion at schools.

“Along with oth­er ini­tia­tives, we no­ticed last year a 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent drop in ad­mis­sions to Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency units re­gard­ing un­con­trolled di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion. In terms of a per­cent­age of al­most 500,000 (pa­tients) it’s a large num­ber,” Deyals­ingh said.

Deyals­ingh added that much of the prob­lem con­cerns food con­sumed and cul­tur­al is­sues. Chang­ing the sit­u­a­tion de­pends on how be­hav­iours are ad­just­ed in­clud­ing the “… Re­la­tion­ship peo­ple’s hands have with their mouths.”

Bhag­wan­dass said lifestyle changes are nec­es­sary for di­a­bet­ics and hy­per­ten­sion pa­tients. This in­cludes di­et, ex­er­cise, avoid­ing al­co­hol and il­lic­it drugs. He said it was very im­por­tant to make time for dai­ly 30-minute walks which help trans­form con­di­tions.

Deyals­ingh said all “step-down” fa­cil­i­ties where COVID pa­tients are re­cu­per­at­ing have acreage for walk­ing.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram mean­while said they weren’t en­cour­ag­ing use of air con­di­tion­ing at COVID fa­cil­i­ties since it’s been seen with pa­tients who have res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions and tu­ber­cu­lo­sis, that fresh air and sun­light con­tributes to the re­cov­ery speed. Bhag­wan­dass ac­knowl­edged the men­tal an­guish that stay­ing in could cause but en­cour­aged peo­ple to ex­er­cise in their yard, do aer­o­bics or dance.

“Mu­sic will make a big dif­fer­ence in how peo­ple feel gen­er­al­ly in these times,” he said.

Paras­ram said the fact that there hadn’t been too new cas­es for sev­er­al days led to com­pla­cen­cy on the part of some, but it’s too ear­ly for that. He not­ed Japan and oth­er coun­tries which ini­tial­ly con­trolled num­bers are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing large sec­ond waves as mea­sures were re­laxed.

“We’re sim­ply ask­ing all to abide by reg­u­la­tions as long as you can—stay home with or with­out reg­u­la­tions,” he said.