Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The “Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals” is on and the Gov­ern­ment does not in­tend to in­sti­tute any ad­di­tion­al re­stric­tions de­spite ris­ing COVID-19 cas­es.

This was the word from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day, al­though he still called for greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty among the pop­u­la­tion with the new XBB.1.5 sub-vari­ant in cir­cu­la­tion and dai­ly cas­es fore­cast­ed to reach the “high hun­dreds” with­in the next two weeks on the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, the Prime Min­is­ter jus­ti­fied the de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue with the Car­ni­val plan de­spite the ris­ing in­fec­tions.

“We do not be­lieve the sit­u­a­tion war­rants us to not have Car­ni­val but we be­lieve that it war­rants us tak­ing per­son­al de­ci­sions about your ex­po­sure to min­imise in­stances for re­quire­ment of health­care de­liv­ery to you,” he said.

This, he said, meant in­creased vig­i­lance and ad­her­ence to prac­tices that are now well known to every­one—ob­serv­ing the pub­lic health pro­to­cols and get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed and boost­ed. This is es­pe­cial­ly crit­i­cal for those with co­mor­bidi­ties, he said.

Lay­ing the foun­da­tion for their de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue with the fes­tiv­i­ties, the PM said, is the com­par­a­tive­ly milder viril­i­ty of cur­rent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing vari­ants whose threats are fur­ther un­der­cut by a high­er lev­el of im­mu­ni­ty among the pop­u­la­tion.

“As of now, giv­en the na­ture of the pop­u­la­tion, giv­en the im­mune re­sponse that we’ve had, giv­en the sup­press­ing ef­fect of the vac­cine pro­gramme and the nat­ur­al im­mu­ni­ty that we have built up, we are now fac­ing a sit­u­a­tion where we can con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with­out the lev­el of fear and dis­tanc­ing that we did be­fore, which caused us to close our bor­der, shut down our schools and so on. Those things are not nec­es­sary at this time,” Dr Row­ley said.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh al­so said the min­istry con­duct­ed a sero­preva­lence study last year to de­ter­mine the lev­el of im­mu­ni­ty among the pop­u­la­tion and it re­turned favourable re­sults. He said 961 sam­ples were se­lect­ed from both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple, with 949 be­ing of use.

Of these sam­ples, he said just 50 did not have de­tectable lev­els of an­ti­bod­ies against COVID-19. He said this meant 94.73 per cent of the sam­ples had an­ti­bod­ies present through both vac­ci­na­tion and nat­u­ral­ly ac­quired through in­fec­tion.

“This is again sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence, quan­ti­ta­tive ev­i­dence that there is a high lev­el of im­mu­ni­ty in the pub­lic,” Deyals­ingh said.

“So, when we say we are com­fort­able with the lev­el of im­mu­ni­ty, this is the ev­i­dence that we re­ly on.”

Right Call

Ge­neti­cist Dr Nicole Ram­lachan agreed with the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue with the plan for Car­ni­val, not­ing that with the cur­rent out­look, COVID-19 vari­ants will con­tin­ue to emerge, caus­ing var­i­ous surges and lulls in cas­es.

“Re­al­ly, at this point in time, we have to learn how to live with this thing. We can’t de­pend on our Gov­ern­ment, as we know, to be able to halt and stop the spread. The on­ly way that it stops is us tak­ing the vac­cines and tak­ing pre­cau­tions and try­ing to pro­tect the el­der­ly and im­muno­com­pro­mised and be our broth­er’s keep­ers,” she said.

Echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of the Gov­ern­ment dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, in­ter­nal med­i­cine spe­cial­ist Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh said a man­date isn’t nec­es­sary for peo­ple to pro­tect them­selves.

“You don’t need a man­date to wear a high-qual­i­ty mask like N95 in a risky in­door pub­lic set­ting. Your choice of mask mat­ters- cloth masks won’t be as ef­fec­tive,” he said.

COVID-19 Pro­jec­tion

Cas­es have been slow­ly in­creas­ing since De­cem­ber, but took a sharp­er up­ward tra­jec­to­ry at the start of 2023. Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health’s Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion’s Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor, Dr Av­ery Hinds, pro­jec­tions are that this will be dwarfed by the end of the month.

“What we did see when we looked at the pro­jec­tions mov­ing for­ward is an in­crease - a fair­ly rapid in­crease in the ex­pect­ed sort of av­er­age num­ber of cas­es per day. So, it was 58 to the last up­date (Tues­day). By the mid­dle of next week, if we con­tin­ue at the rate we’re go­ing, the av­er­age num­ber of cas­es may be in the low hun­dreds and the week af­ter that, maybe in the high hun­dreds,” he said.

Up to Tues­day, there were six cas­es of the XBB.1.5 sub-vari­ant un­der mon­i­tor­ing de­tect­ed in T&T - four of which were con­firmed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Pro­fes­sor of Mol­e­c­u­lar Ge­net­ics and Vi­rol­o­gy at UWI, Pro­fes­sor Chris­tine Car­ring­ton, there are five oth­er sub-vari­ants un­der mon­i­tor­ing de­tect­ed in the coun­try.

For XBB.1.5, Pro­fes­sor Car­ring­ton said the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s (WHO) risk as­sess­ment pub­lished yes­ter­day, based on ear­ly da­ta sug­gests it “may con­tribute to in­creas­es in case in­ci­dence glob­al­ly.” How­ev­er, she not­ed this is based on the da­ta from just the Unit­ed States and more is need­ed from oth­er coun­tries for a more ac­cu­rate pic­ture of its risk.

She al­so not­ed that the sub-vari­ant is the most an­ti­body re­sis­tant to date, mean­ing it is less sen­si­tive in lab­o­ra­to­ry tests to an­ti­bod­ies cre­at­ed by vac­cines and pre­vi­ous in­fec­tions. She said this does not trans­late to in­ef­fec­tiv­i­ty of vac­cines in the re­al world.

She said while as­sess­ments are still on­go­ing in­to the sub-vari­ant’s abil­i­ty to cause se­vere in­fec­tions, it “doesn’t car­ry any mu­ta­tions that we know to date that are as­so­ci­at­ed with a po­ten­tial change in sever­i­ty.”

Fu­ture Re­stric­tions?

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley al­so struck down calls to in­tro­duce re­stric­tions at the bor­ders to in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers, say­ing it is not nec­es­sary be­cause the glob­al vari­ants are al­ready cir­cu­lat­ing in the coun­try.

“That is not a nec­es­sary re­sponse at this time. Our re­sponse has to be to sup­press the spread of what we have amongst us,” he said.

Coun­tries have be­gun to in­sti­tute re­stric­tions on trav­ellers from Chi­na fol­low­ing a mas­sive out­break in the coun­try, fol­low­ing which it re­tal­i­at­ed against the is­su­ing coun­tries.

Giv­en that T&T’s largest batch of COVID-19 vac­cines came from Chi­na and with a $1.1 bil­lion trade re­la­tion­ship with that coun­try in ex­is­tence, Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter if T&T would be will­ing to in­sti­tute trav­el re­stric­tions against Chi­na should the need arise.

“Know your coun­try. Trinidad and To­ba­go was one of the first coun­tries in the world to have placed re­stric­tions on peo­ple com­ing from Chi­na (in 2020). As a mat­ter of fact, when we did it, the Chi­nese were a lit­tle sur­prised and en­quired as to if we are con­fi­dent and we ex­plained our po­si­tion and Chi­na is a coun­try we have good re­la­tions with and they un­der­stood,” the PM said.

While the Prime Min­is­ter main­tained re­stric­tions are not yet nec­es­sary on any front, he did not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty for the fu­ture - es­pe­cial­ly if the pop­u­la­tion does not ex­er­cise re­spon­si­bil­i­ty over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

“If the in­creased num­bers be­come threat­en­ing with re­spect to our abil­i­ty to pro­vide the care that we re­quire, then the Gov­ern­ment will have to act in a dif­fer­ent way,” he said.

With ris­ing cas­es on the hori­zon, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said work from home arrange­ments in the pub­lic sec­tor will be al­lowed.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion on it, he said: “This is a case-by-case arrange­ment and once the man­age­ment in the pub­lic ser­vice can jus­ti­fy what is be­ing done, we will not dis­cour­age it and, of course, the pri­vate sec­tor is free to do as much as they can.”