sto­ries by Renu­ka Singh

The COVID-19 spike pre­dat­ed the East­er week­end, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Health, Dr Av­ery Hinds said yes­ter­day.

He said the spike pre-East­er was trig­gered by a con­flu­ence of is­sues in­clud­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in the weeks lead­ing up to East­er, the re­open­ing of sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and church­es.

“East­er week­end and be­yond we saw ad­di­tion­al in­creas­es, but the in­creas­es pre-dat­ed East­er and would have been in part re­lat­ed to what­ev­er ac­tiv­i­ties hap­pened be­fore that and then com­pound­ed by move­ment so we had a surge on top of a surge,” Hinds said.

Hinds was speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health’s vir­tu­al COVID-19 up­date yes­ter­day.

The tim­ing of the surge in cas­es is of spe­cial in­ter­est now as it has be­come a po­lit­i­cal bone of con­tention be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion.

On Mon­day dur­ing the de­bate to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that it was the can­dle­light vig­ils and prayer meet­ings for slain court clerk An­drea Bharatt that pre­cip­i­tat­ed the start of the spike.

The Op­po­si­tion has main­tained that it was Row­ley’s in­vi­ta­tion to spend East­er in To­ba­go that led to the surge in cas­es.

“What we note from our sta­tis­tics, from our in­for­ma­tion is that we be­gan to see a week-on-week in­crease in the num­ber of cas­es record­ed from the start of week 10,” Hinds said. The tenth week was the be­gin­ning of March.

“What we were see­ing around the weeks of the mid­dle of Feb­ru­ary was that we had seen 34 cas­es, week 8, 29 go­ing down, week 9 it start­ed to turn around so it didn’t go down by much, 27 and then by week 10, it start­ed to go up,” Hinds said.

He said that by week 11, on and around March 14, there was an 89 per cent in­crease in pos­i­tive cas­es.

By the next week, March 21, there was a 64 per cent in­crease.

“So we be­gan to see a steady in­crease in one week to the next be­gin­ning in as ear­ly as that sec­ond week in March,” Hinds said.

By week 14, which co­in­cid­ed with the first week in April, there was a large in­crease.

“The move­ments that would have been tak­ing place at both of those time pe­ri­ods or just be­fore both of those time pe­ri­ods would con­tribute to ad­di­tion­al mix­ing of a pop­u­la­tion that has cir­cu­lat­ing virus.”

“And to the ex­tent that there is any move­ment and mix­ing, there is the in­creased chance of trans­mis­sion. We saw in the Ju­ly to Au­gust time pe­ri­od, move­ment and mix­ing pre­cip­i­tat­ed a spike in the Au­gust in­to Sep­tem­ber time­frame,” Hinds said.

We had a lot of things go­ing on; the re­open­ing of sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties against that back­drop, we had peo­ple who were go­ing to church and not well, so we see the dri­ving fac­tors for the surge at that point in time are mul­ti­fac­to­r­i­al,” he said.

PM stands his ground

Mean­while, Dr Row­ley yes­ter­day said he could not un­der­stand why there were ques­tions about the tim­ing of the re­lease of in­for­ma­tion that it was the can­dle­light vig­ils that trig­gered the start of the spike.

“I could have wait­ed 300 years, it doesn’t change the facts,” he said yes­ter­day.

He ac­cept­ed that the sit­u­a­tion was a sen­si­tive one but said that COVID-19 did not take that in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

“The emo­tion­al out­pour­ing is un­der­stood, the cause is a wor­thy one but the virus does not give those con­sid­er­a­tions a pass,” he said via text.

“Any mass con­gre­ga­tion is a threat and when it goes on for weeks and in such large num­bers in so many ar­eas the sci­ence and the heat maps are the tools of ex­pres­sion,” he said.

“When did I lose my free speech?” he asked.

Mean­while, at least one po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist is ques­tion­ing why the Prime Min­is­ter al­ways brought the Op­po­si­tion in­to his speech­es.

Dr Win­ford James yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that po­lit­i­cal par­ties will take po­lit­i­cal ac­tion. James said that while he did not know whether the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) or­gan­ised the vig­ils.

“I do not know if she (Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar) was asked if she or­gan­ised it and what her re­sponse was,” he said.

“I can say that every time I lis­ten to a press con­fer­ence called by the Prime Min­is­ter, I no­tice that he al­ways brings in the Op­po­si­tion in a bad light, he can­not help him­self,” James said.

James said that it seemed to be Row­ley’s “po­lit­i­cal re­flex”.

“It is not that he has to do so be­cause there are peo­ple who sup­port the UNC and un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween a hol­low charge and a se­ri­ous charge and there are peo­ple for who it does not make a dif­fer­ence,” he said.

“The Prime Min­is­ter feels du­ty-bound to bring in the Op­po­si­tion,” he said.

James said that it was not that the Op­po­si­tion was with­out crit­i­cism “but every sin­gle time, that they have these press con­fer­ences, bet your bot­tom dol­lar that there would be a de­mon­i­sa­tion of the UNC”.

James said while it was okay for one po­lit­i­cal par­ty to de­monise the oth­er, some­times it could be a “lit­tle heavy for re­cep­tion”.

“Peo­ple like me won­der why can’t this man just sim­ply present the facts, the ac­tu­al facts just as they are,” he said.

An­oth­er 17 die from virus

The Min­istry of Health re­port­ed an­oth­er 17 deaths from the COVID-19 virus over the last 24 hours.

In its dai­ly re­port, the Min­istry al­so re­port­ed an­oth­er 582 peo­ple had con­tract­ed the virus.

The 17 deaths yes­ter­day took this month’s toll to 256 and the new cas­es brought the num­ber of peo­ple in­fect­ed in the month of May, to 10,637.

Ac­tive cas­es now stand at 8,710. There are cur­rent­ly 447 pa­tients in hos­pi­tals.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry’s da­ta, 75,586 have re­ceived their first dos­es of the vac­cine while 1,179 have re­ceived their sec­ond dos­es.

There are 207 peo­ple in step-down fa­cil­i­ties, 180 in State quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties and 7,474 in home quar­an­tine.