The coun­try has record­ed its third Delta vari­ant death and 34 new cas­es of the vari­ant, which in­cludes three preg­nant women.

The de­tails were re­leased by the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day, as the coun­try al­so record­ed ten COVID-19 deaths and 386 new cas­es, which was the high­est jump in dai­ly re­port­ed cas­es since June 9 this year.

The star­tling sta­tis­tics al­so came as se­nior health of­fi­cials con­tin­ued to mon­i­tor the In­ten­sive Care Unit bed spaces in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem, which, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health, stood at four yes­ter­day morn­ing, even as work was on­go­ing to set up the Field Hos­pi­tal at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Port-of-Spain

How­ev­er, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of one re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty said more beds were need­ed.

Delta con­cern ris­ing

The num­ber of con­firmed cas­es of the Delta vari­ant of COVID-19 now stands at 136, af­ter the 34 new cas­es were re­port­ed yes­ter­day.

The min­istry gave a break­down of the pa­tients who are Delta pos­i­tive.

It said:

18 cas­es are male, 16 cas­es are fe­male

Of the fe­males - three are preg­nant

30 out of the 34 pa­tients had no trav­el his­to­ry

More than half of the cas­es are not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, with 15 un­vac­ci­nat­ed, one par­tial­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and 14 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

Some 17 out of the 34 had con­tact with oth­er Delta-pos­i­tive pa­tients and four cas­es are pend­ing epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion

One case is de­ceased, which means that the per­son was found to have the Delta vari­ant then died from the virus

This brings the num­ber of Delta deaths in the coun­try to three. But the min­istry did not say if they are men or women or give their vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus.

And as preg­nant women con­tin­ue to be vul­ner­a­ble to the virus, the cas­es of preg­nant women with the Delta vari­ant will add to the wor­ry by health of­fi­cials, who have ex­pressed con­cern about the rise in COVID-19 cas­es among ex­pec­tant moth­ers.

Ear­li­er this month, the Di­rec­tor of Women’s Health at the Min­istry of Health, Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh, said 744 preg­nant women had con­tract­ed COVID and two died.

A sharp jump in new cas­es

Mean­while, two peo­ple with­out any co­mor­bidi­ties were among ten to suc­cumb to the virus.

The Min­istry of Health up­date yes­ter­day said those who died were four el­der­ly males, four el­der­ly fe­males and two mid­dle-aged fe­males.

Eight of the pa­tients had co­mor­bidi­ties, in­clud­ing can­cer, high blood pres­sure and heart dis­ease. The death toll now stands at 1,668.

On­ly this week, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Health Dr Av­ery Hinds warned COVID cas­es were slow­ly climb­ing.

Yes­ter­day’s 386 new cas­es were record­ed as the largest num­ber of cas­es re­port­ed in a day since June.

And even as the Min­istry of Health alert­ed the na­tion to the wor­ry­ing sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing ICU beds in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem, work­ers and health of­fi­cials were seen set­ting up with Field Hos­pi­tal at the Jean Pierre Com­plex yes­ter­day.

The work be­gan one day af­ter Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said it would be op­er­a­tional once again to deal with the bed short­age in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards al­so gave an up­date, say­ing the min­istry con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the num­ber of pa­tients re­quir­ing ICU care.

She told Guardian Me­dia, “COVID-pos­i­tive pa­tients that present in a se­vere clin­i­cal or med­ical con­di­tion at the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment at the tra­di­tion­al health­care sys­tem con­tin­ue to be man­aged in com­pli­ance to the MOH pol­i­cy for the clin­i­cal man­age­ment of ICU lev­el pa­tients. These pa­tients are man­aged un­til they are clin­i­cal­ly sta­ble to be trans­ferred to a bed in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem. The MOH con­tin­ues to make every ef­fort to in­crease the num­ber of ICU beds on a phased ba­sis. How­ev­er, the pop­u­la­tion is ad­vised that re­sources are fi­nite and re­sources will be ex­pend­ed if this trend con­tin­ues.”

Guardian Me­dia was told that four ICU beds were avail­able.

How­ev­er, North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty CEO Davlin Thomas said more beds are need­ed in the ICU.

He said all COVID treat­ment ICU beds are filled.

In fact, he said de­mand is over­flow­ing.

Vac­ci­nat­ed Tri­nis won’t have to quar­an­tine in the UK

But there was some wel­come news yes­ter­day, as the Unit­ed King­dom an­nounced its in­bound vac­ci­nat­ed ar­rivals pol­i­cy will be ex­tend­ed to a fur­ther 30-plus des­ti­na­tions from No­vem­ber 1.

These will in­clude Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This pol­i­cy means that ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed trav­ellers from Trinidad and To­ba­go and the oth­er coun­tries, in­oc­u­lat­ed with ap­proved vac­cines, will no longer need to self-iso­late in Eng­land or take a PCR test be­fore trav­el.