Rishard Khan
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt
A spike in COVID-19 cases is imminent within the coming days following recent movement and non-adherence to the public health guidelines, Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram predicted, during a Ministry of Health press conference on Wednesday morning.
"In light of the recent movement of individuals and somewhat non-adherence to the public health guidelines, we expect to see an increase in the number of cases in the next few days to weeks," he said.
He did not single out any event for contributing to this but noted it occurred over the past two weeks.
The expectation has now led the ministry to ramp up its treatment of patients to get them out of hospitals in the parallel health care systems and into step down facilities.
"We are trying to get our hospitalised patients into step down facilities as quickly as we can—which we have done before—anticipating a greater need for hospital beds," Dr Parasram said.
The Chief Medical Officer could not predict, however, just how large this spike is going to be.
"No one can predict for sure what is going to be the outcome. If you have a crowd of 1,000 people gathering and no one has COVID-19 or COVID-19 related symptoms—obviously out of that one event nothing would happen. However, if you have a crowded situation where you have a number of individuals or positive cases roaming around in that environment, you'd get an explosion of cases about a week later," he explained.