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Monday, July 7, 2025

CMO warns Delta variant might get here soon

by

CARISA LEE
1444 days ago
20210723

CARISA LEE

 

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram be­lieves it's on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore T&T gets its first case of the Delta Vari­ant.

"It's a high­ly trans­mis­si­ble vari­ant," Dr Paras­ram said.

He was, at the time, speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence to give an up­date on the Pub­lic-Pri­vate Vac­ci­na­tion Part­ner­ship at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), on Fri­day Ju­ly 23rd.

The CMO said the vari­ant is al­ready in the Caribbean and the same way it en­tered those shores, it can and will some time or the oth­er en­ter ours.

“But,” he said, “we have a se­cret weapon—the vac­cine.”

Dr Paras­ram said both WHO-ap­proved vac­cines ad­min­is­tered to cit­i­zens, name­ly Sinopharm and As­tra Zeneca, have been shown to be ef­fec­tive against the Delta vari­ant, and that is why it is im­por­tant to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

It is a plea Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh en­dors­es.

"We are prepar­ing for Delta and our on­ly way out of it is to get vac­ci­nat­ed as we much as we can," Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said.

The min­is­ter al­so as­sured the min­istry are not wait­ing for the vari­ant to reach here to have a re­sponse.

He said he chaired a meet­ing with PA­HO, CARPHA and five RHAs yes­ter­day, to plan for its ar­rival.

One of the first tasks on the agen­da, ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, is to vac­ci­nate health­care work­ers. This dri­ve will take place next Fri­day.

The Min­is­ter said the coun­try would be in trou­ble if the Delta vari­ant spreads like the SARS-CoV-2 Gam­ma (P1) vari­ant.

Business COVID-19Ministry of Health


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