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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Health Ministry silent on lab-confirmed case of hMPV in T&T

by

194 days ago
20250116
Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health re­mains mum on a re­port from a med­ical lab that this coun­try has its first con­firmed case of Hu­man Metap­neu­movirus (hM­PV).

Last Sun­day Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said while hM­PV is here, there are so far no con­firmed cas­es in this coun­try.

But yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cial from the St Au­gus­tine Med­ical Lab­o­ra­to­ry Lim­it­ed (STAML) told Guardian Me­dia, “I can con­firm to you that we have di­ag­nosed an hM­PV case, and I can con­firm as well that the di­ag­no­sis was in No­vem­ber.”

The of­fi­cial said, “I’ve just writ­ten to them stat­ing that a case of hM­PV was de­tect­ed in No­vem­ber 2024 via a Na­sopha­ryn­geal swab sam­ple us­ing PCR lab analy­sis in our mol­e­c­u­lar med­i­cine lab.”

The “them” the of­fi­cial re­ferred to are the Min­istry of Health and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO).

Asked by Guardian Me­dia why STAML took so long to re­port the di­ag­no­sis, the of­fi­cial ex­plained, “There was no man­date to re­port such as this virus on­ly gained sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion very re­cent­ly.

“We are a clin­i­cal lab so, there­fore, test­ing sam­ples such as those and many oth­ers are rou­tine and on­ly if a man­date is is­sued would we then send to a third par­ty. Sur­veil­lance of this virus on­ly came to con­cerns in this coun­try in the past few days, I be­lieve.”

The lab of­fi­cial could not pro­vide de­tails on the pa­tient as they said the sam­ple was mere­ly sent by the pa­tient’s doc­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO), hM­PV is one of the virus­es that caus­es the com­mon cold (up­per res­pi­ra­to­ry in­fec­tion). It usu­al­ly makes peo­ple on­ly mild­ly sick, but it can make some peo­ple very ill.

A surge in hM­PV in Chi­na had raised fears of an­oth­er Covid-like pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, health ex­perts have since said that the virus is not like Covid and has been around for many years.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh he said he had not seen any cor­re­spon­dence from STAML on the mat­ter.

“Their nor­mal lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is with the CMO to re­port these things,” he said.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh, how­ev­er, urged the pop­u­la­tion to re­main calm.

“CARPHA had said this clear­ly, that this is not pan­dem­ic ma­te­r­i­al so please don’t scare the pop­u­la­tion. Be­cause I had to re­fute what me­dia was say­ing about Chi­na caus­ing pan­ic around the world. HM­PV is not pan­dem­ic-caus­ing. As I said in the press con­fer­ence on Sun­day, we have had cas­es in Trinidad be­fore. It was iso­lat­ed in 2001, it is all over the world. Sec­ondary news sources scan­dalised the is­sue in Chi­na say­ing there is a state of emer­gency, and it was false,” he said.

A me­dia re­lease was sub­se­quent­ly sent out by the Health Min­istry stat­ing, “The pub­lic is ad­vised that the hM­PV is not a no­ti­fi­able dis­ease in Trinidad and To­ba­go at this time.”

A no­ti­fi­able dis­ease is one that, when di­ag­nosed, re­quires health providers (usu­al­ly by law) to re­port to state or lo­cal pub­lic health of­fi­cials.

The re­lease fur­ther stat­ed, “It must be not­ed that the Min­is­ter of Health and the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer have stat­ed pub­licly that the hM­PV is not new to the world, in­clud­ing the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as and Trinidad and To­ba­go, and has been de­tect­ed world­wide as ear­ly as 2001.”

How­ev­er, it did not ad­dress the is­sue of whether there is a con­firmed case in T&T.

Guardian Me­dia sent fol­low-up ques­tions to CMO Dr Roshan Paras­ram, but we were ad­vised by the Health Min­istry to sub­mit the ques­tions to the Min­istry via email.

HM­PV is said to spread through di­rect con­tact be­tween peo­ple, or when some­one touch­es a con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed sur­face. It can lead to a mild res­pi­ra­to­ry tract in­fec­tion for most peo­ple which is usu­al­ly in­dis­tin­guish­able from the flu. Symp­toms in­clude cough­ing, fever and con­ges­tion.


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