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Sunday, August 10, 2025

Hinds: Safe zones can provide artificial pockets of herd immunity

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1433 days ago
20210906
Ministry of Health Epidemiology Technical director Dr Avery Hinds.

Ministry of Health Epidemiology Technical director Dr Avery Hinds.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While there is some con­tention over the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to al­low cer­tain leisure priv­i­leges to vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion Dr Av­ery Hinds says the sys­tem of safe zones for vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple can work.

Last Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said if pro­jec­tions con­tin­ue with low COVID-19 num­bers and con­sis­tent vac­ci­na­tions, the Gov­ern­ment aims to re­open bars, gyms, cin­e­mas, casi­nos and al­low in-house din­ing in four weeks. Row­ley said cer­tain as­pects of the busi­ness­es could be­come safe zones where vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple can par­tic­i­pate.

At yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health COVID-19 up­date, Hinds ex­plained that a safe zone was a con­cept where the min­istry will try to fa­cil­i­tate the move­ment of peo­ple with a low­er risk of be­ing in­fect­ed or in­fec­tious for leisure-type ac­tiv­i­ties.

“It is like you are cre­at­ing an ar­ti­fi­cial pock­et of herd im­mu­ni­ty by hav­ing all the peo­ple in a par­tic­u­lar space vac­ci­nat­ed while they in­ter­act. So the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, it is one of the ap­proach­es that can re­duce risk but will not, clear­ly, elim­i­nate the risk al­to­geth­er. It is an ap­proach that can re­duce risk by hav­ing a low­er risk co­hort or group of in­di­vid­u­als in­ter­act­ing in these set­tings. So from an epi­demi­o­log­ic per­spec­tive, yes, it is an idea that is sup­port­ed and the more peo­ple that are vac­ci­nat­ed, the bet­ter the idea will work,” Hinds said.

Oth­er coun­tries are us­ing sim­i­lar poli­cies. France re­quires its peo­ple to car­ry health pass­es to ac­cess eater­ies, leisure and cul­tur­al spaces. De­spite protests there, the gov­ern­ment re­mains res­olute that the sys­tem is work­ing.

As hun­dreds of peo­ple went to vac­ci­na­tions sites last week­end for a shot of the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine, Hinds urged oth­ers to make use of the avail­able dos­es be­fore they ex­pire in No­vem­ber. In Au­gust, the Unit­ed States do­nat­ed 305,370 dos­es of the vac­cines, which the Min­istry of Health al­lot­ted to sec­ondary school chil­dren be­tween ages 12 and 18. How­ev­er, vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy among par­ents led to the min­istry of­fer­ing dos­es to teach­ers and health­care work­ers be­fore al­so of­fer­ing adults a lim­it­ed amount as well.

Hinds said that in the first few days of ad­min­is­ter­ing the Pfiz­er vac­cine to chil­dren, there were above 3,000 vac­ci­na­tions per day. The rate dropped just un­der 1,000 but has in­creased slight­ly re­cent­ly.

“We want to en­cour­age all who wish to get the Pfiz­er vac­cine to make haste to get their vac­ci­na­tions on board. Those vac­cines do have an ex­piry date at about the end of No­vem­ber. So giv­en that it is about a five-week time pe­ri­od from the first vac­cine to full im­mu­ni­ty, we want to count back­ward by Sep­tem­ber in­to Oc­to­ber. As many peo­ple as pos­si­ble should be mak­ing use of the avail­abil­i­ty of those vac­cines, in or­der to make full use of the avail­able stock pri­or to the ex­piry date be­com­ing an is­sue.”

Pro­fes­sor of Mol­e­c­u­lar Ge­net­ics and Vi­rol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Chris­tine Car­ring­ton, said there was a mis­con­cep­tion that be­cause vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple could still get in­fect­ed with COVID-19, there is no need for the vac­cine. How­ev­er, Car­ring­ton said that an in­fec­tion was not the same as a dis­ease.

“In­fec­tion means that a virus has en­tered your body and has be­gun to mul­ti­ply in your cells. That mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of the virus can cause dam­age, ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly. If enough dam­age is done, then you will feel sick, you ex­pe­ri­ence dis­ease. So in­fec­tion and dis­ease are not the same things,” Car­ring­ton said.

She al­so said not all in­fec­tions lead to dis­ease. She added that al­though some COVID-19 vari­ants are more re­sis­tant to vac­cines, they still mas­sive­ly re­duce the chance of se­vere dis­ease and death. 

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Health, Dr Mari­am Ab­dool-Richards, said few­er peo­ple have been ad­mit­ted in­to the par­al­lel health sys­tems in re­cent weeks.

As of yes­ter­day morn­ing, there were 372 (291 in hos­pi­tals and 81 in step-down fa­cil­i­ties)

She said there was a 3:1 ra­tio of peo­ple who were crit­i­cal­ly and se­vere­ly ill to those re­cov­er­ing.

“That again un­der­scores the clin­i­cal sever­i­ty. That is how ill peo­ple are once they con­tract the COVID-19 virus,” Ab­dool-Richards said.

Oc­cu­pan­cy with­in the sys­tem was at  36 per cent and ward lev­el care showed that four of 10 beds were oc­cu­pied. In­ten­sive Care Unit us­age was at 76 per cent and 30 per cent in the High De­pen­den­cy Units. Ab­dool-Richards added that the min­istry con­tin­ued to see chil­dren be­ing ad­mit­ted for med­ical care and high de­mand for ICU treat­ment.


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