Rishard Khan
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day con­firmed that the Brazil­ian vari­ant of the COVID-19 virus, which is far more trans­mis­si­ble than oth­er strains, has been de­tect­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The vari­ant was de­tect­ed in a sam­ple that was sent to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies for ge­net­ic se­quenc­ing.

The sam­ple was tak­en from a COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tient in the Nar­i­va/Ma­yaro coun­ty. 

“The con­tact trac­ing re­quired to re­strict the spread of the virus has al­ready be­gun. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the pub­lic is re­mind­ed that all quar­an­tine pro­to­cols re­main in place to en­sure the con­tin­ued pro­tec­tion of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the min­istry said in a state­ment.

It’s the first time a vari­ant of con­cern has been found with­in the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion.

Both the UK (B117) and Brazil­ian vari­ants have been de­tect­ed lo­cal­ly in the past, how­ev­er, it was de­tect­ed in repa­tri­at­ed na­tion­als or peo­ple seek­ing en­try in­to the coun­try.

Ear­li­er in March, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram in­di­cat­ed that mon­i­tor­ing of sam­ples for vari­ants of con­cern from with­in the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion be­gan due to the rate of spread be­ing wit­nessed.

Be­fore this point, on­ly sam­ples from repa­tri­at­ed na­tion­als were mon­i­tored. 

Pro­fes­sor of Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies’ Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences Pro­fes­sor Ter­rence Seemu­n­gal said he’s not sur­prised with the de­vel­op­ment and be­lieves the vari­ant is like­ly al­ready in cir­cu­la­tion among the pop­u­la­tion. 

“I don’t know enough de­tails about the per­son (who the vari­ant was found in) whether the per­son was a trav­eller or not but if the per­son was found from with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, I would ex­pect that it has al­ready spread,” he said.

Vi­rol­o­gy Pro­fes­sor Dr Christo­pher Oura em­pha­sised the need for the vari­ant to be erad­i­cat­ed.

“We know how to get rid of this virus. We know what to do. We need to test. We need to track and we need to trace,” he said.

“So we need to look very care­ful­ly at the area where it’s cir­cu­lat­ing and make sure we test and we track and we trace the virus so we catch as many of the peo­ple or all the peo­ple that have been in­fect­ed and we make sure those peo­ple iso­late, we make sure those peo­ple don’t pass the virus on to oth­ers.”

He, how­ev­er, does not be­lieve in­creased re­stric­tions are nec­es­sary at this time.

“Not nec­es­sar­i­ly in re­sponse to this par­tic­u­lar vari­ant. I think what we have to do- we have to work out how far this par­tic­u­lar vari­ant is spread­ing and we have to look to see what oth­er virus are spread­ing,” he said.

Dr Oura not­ed that in do­ing this, it needs to be de­ter­mined how the vari­ant was able to en­ter the coun­try and treat it.

He un­der­scored that the pres­ence of the vari­ant means that the pub­lic health guide­lines and COVID-19 pro­to­cols need to be ad­hered to even more close­ly.

Pro­fes­sor Seemu­n­gal added that the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine is still ef­fec­tive against the Brazil vari­ant.

About the Brazil­ian Vari­ant of Con­cern (P1)

This vari­ant was first de­tect­ed in sam­ples from Man­aus in the Ama­zonas state in north­ern Brazil in mid-De­cem­ber. Sim­u­la­tions of P1’s prop­er­ties sug­gest that the vari­ant is 1.7 to 2.4 times more trans­mis­si­ble.

It is un­clear yet if it is any dead­lier. It can cause re­in­fec­tion in peo­ple pre­vi­ous­ly in­fect­ed with an­oth­er strain. Pre­lim­i­nary da­ta in­di­cate that the vac­cine de­vel­oped by As­traZeneca is ef­fec­tive against the Brazil­ian vari­ant with­out mod­i­fi­ca­tion to the vac­cine.