For the sec­ond time this month, Trinidad and To­ba­go has record­ed its dead­liest day for the pan­dem­ic, as 31 peo­ple suc­cumbed to COVID-19 yes­ter­day. Among these deaths were ten el­der­ly males, nine el­der­ly fe­males, six mid­dle-aged males, five mid­dle-aged fe­males and one male child. The death of the child means the coun­try has now lost two chil­dren to COVID-19 in the last six days and five for the pan­dem­ic since March 2020.

The death of the child came one day af­ter Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­vealed that 14 chil­dren un­der the age of one had con­tract­ed the virus in the last three months, among them eleven ba­bies un­der three months old.

Com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dence of child deaths with­in the last week, in­ter­nal med­i­cine spe­cial­ist Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh yes­ter­day de­scribed it as fright­en­ing but not un­ex­pect­ed.

“It’s cer­tain­ly a fright­en­ing trend but ex­pect­ed in parts of the world in which the tsuna­mi of the Delta vari­ant has struck and with this new vari­ant, there has been in­creased trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty and the po­ten­tial for younger per­sons be­ing ex­treme­ly ill,” Dr Teelucks­ingh said.

He said it’s a re­minder that no one is ex­empt from the dis­ease.

“It would be tan­ta­mount to play­ing Russ­ian roulette to say that you are young, fit and well and that you do not need to ad­here to the re­stric­tions and mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies out­lined to pre­vent trans­mis­sion, or you do not need to vac­ci­nate. It would be fool­hardy at this point be­cause high­ly trans­mis­si­ble vari­ants like Delta and the evolv­ing so-called su­per vari­ant in parts of south­ern Africa will cut through un­vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tions like a scythe and could po­ten­tial­ly in­crease the mor­tal­i­ty rate in per­sons who are prone to in­fec­tion,” he said.

Dr Teelucks­ingh said it’s im­por­tant that par­ents get vac­ci­nat­ed and ad­here to the pub­lic health pro­to­cols to help re­duce the risk of trans­mit­ting the dis­ease to their chil­dren.

Mean­while, No­vem­ber has be­come the sec­ond dead­liest month for COVID-19, record­ing 344 deaths in the last 25 days. June 2021 was so far the coun­try’s dead­liest month, record­ing 352 deaths.

Yes­ter­day, the coun­try al­so con­firmed 624 new COVID-19 cas­es in 24 hours, mark­ing the third con­sec­u­tive day of over 600 cas­es. Dur­ing the past month, 10,959 COVID-19 cas­es have been con­firmed, mak­ing No­vem­ber the sec­ond most in­fec­tious month to date, be­hind May 2021’s whop­ping 13,085 cas­es.

Ac­tive cas­es now stand at 9,606 and based on the cur­rent rate of in­crease, T&T could cross 10,000 ac­tive cas­es by this week­end and reach record highs by next week.

As COVID-19 cas­es in­crease, so do hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions, which are now at a pan­dem­ic high of 572. Six of Trinidad’s COVID-19 hos­pi­tals are above 75 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy, a lev­el at which re­sources are put un­der strain. There are three COVID-19 hos­pi­tals above 100 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy, mean­ing beds out­side of those al­lo­cat­ed for COVID-19 were con­vert­ed to ward pos­i­tive pa­tients. The Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty’s ICU, which hous­es some of the most crit­i­cal pa­tients, is at 93 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy with two beds left. Sim­i­lar­ly, To­ba­go’s ICU, where ca­pac­i­ty was re­cent­ly ex­pand­ed, is at 82 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy, with two beds re­main­ing.

Vac­ci­na­tions re­main low in the 24-hour re­port­ing pe­ri­od, with just 3,380 dos­es ad­min­is­tered. How­ev­er, on­ly 1,166 of these dos­es were among peo­ple in­oc­u­lat­ed for the first time with ei­ther a first dose or a one-dose vac­cine. As the coun­try ends its ninth month with freely avail­able and ac­ces­si­ble vac­cines, 54.2 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion re­mains un­vac­ci­nat­ed, while 57.3 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.