In the last sev­en days, To­ba­go has record­ed 141 new COVID-19 cas­es, push­ing the is­land’s to­tal cas­es since March 2020 to 10,721.

While To­ba­go has record­ed high­er week­ly to­tals over the last two years, these lat­est fig­ures re­flect a ris­ing trend across the is­land. Over the pre­vi­ous four weeks, To­ba­go’s week­ly cas­es have steadi­ly risen, from 86 be­tween Ju­ly 19 and Ju­ly 25, peak­ing last week at 160 with cas­es record­ed be­tween Au­gust 2nd and 8th.

While of­fi­cial cas­es have no longer been an ac­cu­rate met­ric to track the course of the pan­dem­ic, as more ac­ces­si­ble, af­ford­able and not-tracked home test­ing be­came the go-to di­ag­nos­tic, hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions have risen to a months-long high on the is­land.

As of Au­gust 15, To­ba­go had 18 peo­ple in hos­pi­tal fa­cil­i­ties. To­ba­go’s Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion in­di­cat­ed that six of these pa­tients were ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, 10 were un­vac­ci­nat­ed and the vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus re­mained un­known for two. Last week, To­ba­go had 24 peo­ple ward­ed in their med­ical fa­cil­i­ties.

As of the lat­est COVID-19 up­date, the is­land al­so record­ed its dead­liest week for the dis­ease from late March in­to ear­ly April this year. Three peo­ple suc­cumbed to COVID-19 this past week, be­tween Sun­day (Au­gust 7) and Sat­ur­day (Au­gust 13). Of these, two were ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, while one was un­vac­ci­nat­ed. The di­vi­sion did not in­di­cate whether the de­ceased had co­mor­bidi­ties. These lat­est fa­tal­i­ties pushed To­ba­go’s to­tal COVID-19 death toll to 277.

Month-to-date, Au­gust has sur­passed June and Ju­ly’s month­ly cas­es and deaths in To­ba­go. In the last 15 days, To­ba­go has record­ed 415 cas­es, above June’s 346 cas­es and Ju­ly’s 237 cas­es. The is­land has record­ed four COVID-19-re­lat­ed deaths, well above the two deaths re­port­ed for June as well as Ju­ly, tied with the to­tal deaths re­port­ed on the is­land for May this year.

Is­land’s shift in re­port­ing

In ear­ly Ju­ly 2022, the di­vi­sion de­cid­ed to is­sue week­ly COVID-19 re­ports, apart from the na­tion­al dai­ly COVID-19 re­ports from the Min­istry of Health, which in­cludes a na­tion­al overview. The di­vi­sion’s re­lease marked a new phase of the di­vi­sion’s re­port­ing as “the COVID-19 virus tran­si­tions world­wide, from the pan­dem­ic state to the en­dem­ic stage.”

Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Dr Faith B Yis­rael, in the Ju­ly re­lease, said, “As we tran­si­tion out of the pan­dem­ic and in­to the en­dem­ic stage, we need to tran­si­tion our re­port­ing mech­a­nisms as well, hence the rea­son for shift­ing to­wards week­ly re­ports in the first in­stance. This will al­so give us a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the tra­jec­to­ry of the virus us­ing the Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Week for­mat, which will al­low us to do track­ing, etc.”

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion still lists COVID-19 as a pan­dem­ic. Pan­demics are a wide­spread, rapid spread of dis­ease, with ex­po­nen­tial­ly ris­ing cas­es over a large area. En­dem­ic virus­es, mean­while, are con­stant­ly present and have a rea­son­ably pre­dictable spread. That pre­dictabil­i­ty al­lows health care sys­tems and doc­tors to pre­pare and adapt, re­duc­ing loss of life. Trinidad and To­ba­go has three en­dem­ic dis­eases: in­fluen­za, gas­troen­teri­tis and dengue.