Kalain Ho­sein

Four more COVID-19 deaths have tak­en T&T’s COVID-19 death toll to 215.

For the first 10 days of May, the coun­try has record­ed 46 deaths, mark­ing the sec­ond dead­liest month for the pan­dem­ic on record to date, be­hind Sep­tem­ber 2020’s 54 deaths.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health, the four de­ceased in­clud­ed two el­der­ly males, one el­der­ly fe­male and one mid­dle-aged male with co­mor­bidi­ties.

The death of the el­der­ly fe­male was To­ba­go’s first COVID-19 death in eight months. The last death in To­ba­go was re­port­ed on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2020.

In the last 14 days, the coun­try has re­port­ed at least two COVID-19 re­lat­ed deaths dai­ly.

In the last 24 hours, 99 new cas­es were re­port­ed. These cas­es have brought the to­tal num­ber of peo­ple in­fect­ed by the dis­ease to 13,454. Of this to­tal, ac­tive cas­es stand at a record high of 3,858.

Ac­tive cas­es in­clude COVID-19 pos­i­tive peo­ple iso­lat­ed at home, in step-down fa­cil­i­ties, or in hos­pi­tals across the coun­try.

T&T’s COVID-19 hos­pi­tals are still at record high oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els. With a to­tal of 330 in hos­pi­tal, T&T’s over­all COVID-19 hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy stands at 50 per­cent across all lev­els of care in both is­lands, with a slight­ly high­er 53 per­cent when on­ly ac­count­ing for Trinidad’s beds. Health of­fi­cials have warned that T&T’s par­al­lel health­care sys­tem may be over­whelmed in sev­en days based on cur­rent trends.

This is four days lat­er than the pre­vi­ous pro­jec­tion, as 110 hos­pi­tal beds have been added to the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem. T&T’s par­al­lel health­care sys­tem now has a to­tal of 662 hos­pi­tal beds avail­able.

Based on the lat­est num­bers from the Min­istry of Health, there are 124 hos­pi­tal­ized at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, mark­ing a 60 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy.

The Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal cur­rent­ly is at a 88 per­cent oc­cu­pan­cy lev­el. At Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, there is a 64 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy. The Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal is al­so re­port­ing an 85 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry’s num­bers, In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) and High De­pen­den­cy Unit (HDU) at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal are at near-record high­est, at 15 and 49, re­spec­tive­ly.

This re­sults in a 75 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy at Cou­va’s ICU and a 84 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy at the hos­pi­tal’s HDU.