Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Al­though the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion de­clared an end to COVID-19 as a Pub­lic Health Emer­gency of In­ter­na­tion­al Con­cern (PHE­IC) yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says there will be no changes at this time to T&T’s COVID-19 re­sponse plan.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Dr Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus said the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion does not mean the virus’ threat has dis­ap­peared, but that the de­c­la­ra­tion was a sig­nal for coun­tries to shift gears on their re­sponse to the out­break with the view that the dis­ease is here to stay.

“What this news means is that it is time for coun­tries to tran­si­tion from emer­gency mode to man­ag­ing COVID-19 along­side oth­er in­fec­tious dis­eases,” Ghe­breye­sus said.

How­ev­er, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia out­side of the Red House in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh said T&T has long been on that tran­si­tion­al path. As such, he said no changes to the ap­proach could be ex­pect­ed in the near fu­ture.

“We start­ed the tran­si­tion by about the end of the first quar­ter of 2022, so we are in­to about a year of our tran­si­tion­ing. Oth­er coun­tries have tran­si­tioned lat­er but that’s fine—every coun­try has their own epi­demi­o­log­i­cal pro­file. We are not sug­gest­ing any rad­i­cal changes at this point in time. All the rad­i­cal mea­sures have been dropped since 2022, com­pul­so­ry mask­ing in pub­lic and so on,” Deyals­ingh said.

Ac­cord­ing to Deyals­ingh, this means quar­an­tine and iso­la­tion pro­to­cols will still be in ef­fect. He al­so said the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem and hy­brid health­care sys­tem will con­tin­ue.

The WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al ex­plained in yes­ter­day’s me­dia con­fer­ence that the de­ci­sion to down­grade the out­break’s sta­tus came out of a meet­ing be­tween an Emer­gency Com­mit­tee un­der the In­ter­na­tion­al Health Reg­u­la­tions and the WHO on Thurs­day.

“For the past year, the Emer­gency Com­mit­tee—and WHO — have been analysing the da­ta care­ful­ly and con­sid­er­ing when the time would be right to low­er the lev­el of alarm. Yes­ter­day, the Emer­gency Com­mit­tee met for the 15th time and rec­om­mend­ed to me that I de­clare an end to the pub­lic health emer­gency of in­ter­na­tion­al con­cern. I have ac­cept­ed that ad­vice,” Ghe­breye­sus said.

“It is, there­fore, with great hope that I de­clare COVID-19 over as a glob­al health emer­gency.”

The de­ci­sion comes al­most a week be­fore the Unit­ed States is set to end its emer­gency re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic on May 11. Ghe­breye­sus said it comes against the back­drop of the pan­dem­ic wan­ing over the past year with pop­u­la­tion im­mu­ni­ty in­creas­ing from vac­ci­na­tion and in­fec­tion, mor­tal­i­ty de­creas­ing and the pres­sure on health sys­tems eas­ing.

A re­lease from the Min­istry of Health, short­ly af­ter the de­c­la­ra­tion, not­ed a sim­i­lar down­ward trend in T&T’s out­break, as COVID-19 con­tin­ues to cir­cu­late at a “very low lev­el.”

“The trans­mis­sion con­tin­ues to be clas­si­fied as com­mu­ni­ty in na­ture. Mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty from COVID-19 has been on a down­ward trend, in keep­ing with the glob­al epi­demi­ol­o­gy pic­ture over the last few months,” it said.

The COVID-19 out­break was de­clared a PHE­IC in Jan­u­ary 2020 and lat­er de­clared a pan­dem­ic on March 11. T&T record­ed its first case one day lat­er on March 12, an im­port­ed case. Since then, 191,496 cas­es were de­tect­ed with 4,390 peo­ple suc­cumb­ing to the dis­ease. In the last week, 146 new cas­es were con­firmed and three peo­ple died.

It’s why the Min­is­ter of Health said the pop­u­la­tion still needs to be vig­i­lant.

“Whilst the pan­dem­ic phase, on a glob­al lev­el, is over, the virus is still cir­cu­lat­ing and we are still ap­peal­ing to in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies - es­pe­cial­ly those in the vul­ner­a­ble groups, the el­der­ly, the preg­nant, the un­vac­ci­nat­ed, those with co­mor­bidi­ties - to con­tin­ue to keep your guard up. If you are not vac­ci­nat­ed, get vac­ci­nat­ed. Our stocks ex­pire in June 2023, so you still have about two months,” Deyals­ingh said.

“This is a time for main­tain­ing some lev­el of the pub­lic health mea­sures to make sure our most vul­ner­a­ble don’t suc­cumb to the virus.”

In­ter­nal med­i­cine spe­cial­ist, Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh, echoed the same call but al­so warned against long-COVID.

“Vul­ner­a­ble pa­tients with chron­ic con­di­tions such as di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, obe­si­ty and heart dis­ease are at risk of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and death. The cri­sis of long COVID with lin­ger­ing symp­toms such as breath­less­ness, joint pain, brain fog, de­pres­sion and heart is­sues re­mains poor­ly man­aged,” he said.

Pae­di­atric cas­es

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by pae­di­a­tri­cian Dr David Bratt from the Min­istry of Health, 13,869 chil­dren un­der the age of 17 con­tract­ed COVID-19 be­tween 2020 and 2022 in T&T.

The bulk of these in­fec­tions were in those be­tween 10 and 14 (4,475 or 32.3 per cent). Of all these in­fec­tions, 463 were hos­pi­talised, 42 of whom had to be ward­ed in In­ten­sive Care or High De­pen­den­cy.

There were 14 pae­di­atric fa­tal­i­ties record­ed, the most be­ing be­tween 10 to 14 (4 deaths). Of these fa­tal­i­ties, two were younger than one year.