To­ba­go has record­ed 82 COVID-19 cas­es emerg­ing among stu­dents and teach­ers on the is­land since the re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es on April 19.

The up­date came dur­ing a joint press con­fer­ence be­tween the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy (DERT) and the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion (DHWSP) at the Vic­tor E Bruce Fi­nan­cial Com­plex in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day. 

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion House Of­fi­cer at the DERT Dr Dane Joseph, along­side the stu­dents and teach­ers were six staffers at the di­vi­sion.

He said among the cas­es in schools, 33 were from sec­ondary school stu­dents and 49 were pri­ma­ry school pupils.

He said there were 51 stu­dents cur­rent­ly in state-or­dered quar­an­tine and ex­plained the ma­jor­i­ty of the pos­i­tive cas­es, 52, were from the Cen­tral Re­gion, with 14 in the North Re­gion and 16 in the East.

How­ev­er, he said the di­vi­sion has no­ticed a plateau in these cas­es over the past five weeks. 

“In the ear­lies, the num­ber per week were rel­a­tive­ly high at a num­ber of 17. How­ev­er, this has grad­u­al­ly re­duced and we are see­ing ac­tu­al­ly a plateau of cas­es be­ing around 10 to 12 cas­es per week amongst our schools,” Joseph said. 

Di­vi­sion Sec­re­tary, Dr Faith B Yis­rael, al­so in­di­cat­ed that there were two cas­es of Mul­ti-sys­tem In­flam­ma­to­ry Syn­drome in Chil­dren (MIS-C) record­ed with­in re­cent weeks on the is­land.

She said the con­di­tion, which fol­lows a COVID-19 in­fec­tion, is pre­dom­i­nant­ly wit­nessed in chil­dren 5-17 years old.

This is why she is urg­ing par­ents to get their chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed, more so now that the dos­es for 5-11-year-olds have ar­rived in the coun­try. 

“We are hop­ing that the par­ents - in the past you’ve en­sured that your chil­dren were vac­ci­nat­ed against all of the oth­er things we get vac­cines for. The Yel­low Fever and the Whoop­ing Cough, and the Measles, Mumps and Rubel­la (MMR). That has been our tra­di­tion.

“We’ve boast­ed in the past about hav­ing very high vac­ci­na­tion rates for all of those and we are hop­ing that the par­ents con­tin­ue to pro­tect their chil­dren by al­low­ing them to be vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause it’s the safe thing to do at this point,” B Yis­rael said. 

To­ba­go’s cas­es rep­re­sent 8.63 per cent of the to­tal num­ber of cas­es to emerge with­in the school sys­tem for the coun­try since the re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es this term.

As of last week, there were 950 such cas­es across both is­lands.

Last Wednes­day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed that be­tween May 9 and 15, there were 328 pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es com­ing out of 153 schools.

The first week of the re­turn saw 28 cas­es from 16 schools. The sec­ond week with 288 cas­es from 243 schools fol­lowed by 306 cas­es from 144 schools the next week.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh, there were 328 cas­es from 153 schools for the week pri­or to last week’s up­date.

—Rishard Khan

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