Kalain Ho­sein

Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says mea­sures are in place in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem for an in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es.

Dur­ing the sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh ex­plained that COVID-19 is not yet en­dem­ic, where the virus cir­cu­lates and af­fects peo­ple at a known pace at a base­line lev­el. It still threat­ens the health­care sys­tem, so con­tin­gency plans are in place across hos­pi­tals.

“Our IPCs, or in­fec­tion pre­ven­tion con­trol pro­to­cols, are ac­tive and prac­tised. We have more than an ad­e­quate sup­ply of pro­tec­tive per­son­nel equip­ment for our health­care work­ers,” he con­tin­ued, “We con­tin­ue to do PCR and anti­gen test­ing.”

Ear­li­er this week, the Min­is­ter said the coun­try has seen a small in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es. T&T is al­so bat­tling with in­fluen­za and res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es.

Yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh said the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) con­tin­ue to con­duct geno­typ­ing ser­vices. He said be­cause of this type of test­ing, “we were able to de­tect our first known case of JN.1 vari­ant yes­ter­day (Thurs­day).” He added, “While the JN.1 vari­ant, which is a fourth-gen­er­a­tion Omi­cron vari­ant, is pos­si­bly more trans­mis­si­ble, it does not pro­duce any more sig­nif­i­cant dis­ease symp­toms.”

While the Min­istry of Health has ceased reg­u­lar re­port­ing of COVID-19 cas­es, deaths, and hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions since May 14, 2023, in a me­dia re­lease on Thurs­day af­ter­noon, the Min­istry of Health said, “For the pe­ri­od De­cem­ber 23, 2023, to Jan­u­ary 15, 2024, un­for­tu­nate­ly, five deaths were record­ed. As of Jan­u­ary 18th, 2024, six deaths were record­ed, four of which oc­curred in Jan­u­ary 2024.”

He ex­plained that there is a “ful­ly com­mis­sioned staff and op­er­a­tional in-pa­tient hos­pi­tal ca­pac­i­ty of 272 beds at three hos­pi­tals across Trinidad.” Deyals­ingh added that as of Jan­u­ary 19, on­ly 13 beds are cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pied, rep­re­sent­ing less than 5 per cent of to­tal oc­cu­pan­cy.

For these se­vere pa­tients, Deyals­ingh said the min­istry has 2,133 vials of Tocilizum­ab. Each pa­tient re­quires four vials for ef­fec­tive treat­ment, mean­ing the coun­try can treat up to 533 se­vere COVID-19 pa­tients with this med­i­cine. He re­it­er­at­ed that “this is on­ly re­served for se­vere, con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19.”

Ear­li­er this week Deyals­ingh re­vealed that 795,000 dos­es of the COVID-19 vac­cines had to be de­stroyed. Over the last few years, these vac­cines would have ex­pired due to peo­ple not com­ing for­ward to be vac­ci­nat­ed. The re­main­ing COVID-19 vac­cines ex­pired last Sep­tem­ber.

How­ev­er, he said since Ju­ly last year, the gov­ern­ment has been in talks to pro­cure new COVID-19 vac­cines. The Health Min­is­ter ex­plained in Par­lia­ment, “I am un­der con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ments not to dis­close the na­ture of those talks, but they are go­ing well.”

In re­sponse to if T&T is look­ing to pro­cure oth­er COVID-19-re­lat­ed med­ica­tions, such as Paxlovid—an oral an­tivi­ral pill used to treat the virus—he said, “or oth­er med­ica­tions, if need­ed, we will try to reach out to pur­chase them.”

Some of the coun­try’s main re­li­gious groups have ad­vised of a rein­tro­duc­tion of COVID pro­to­cols. Sim­i­lar mea­sures are be­ing tak­en in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in To­ba­go.