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Friday, July 11, 2025

MoH ready for any COVID-19 spike after THA election

by

Rishard Khan
1312 days ago
20211206
PDP supporters celebrate as THA results are called in their favour outside the party’s headquarters in Roxborough, Tobago, last night.

PDP supporters celebrate as THA results are called in their favour outside the party’s headquarters in Roxborough, Tobago, last night.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

The Min­istry of Health has al­most dou­bled up on space in its step-down fa­cil­i­ties to ac­com­mo­date an in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es - ei­ther from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions cam­paign­ing or the ar­rival of the Omi­cron vari­ant.

This was the word from Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day.

Ques­tioned at the Min­istry of Health’s vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence about any con­cerns of fur­ther spikes in cas­es, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said: “We are al­ways pre­pared to ac­com­mo­date ex­tra per­sons fol­low­ing any con­gre­ga­tion. Let’s hope that every­thing goes well to­day in To­ba­go.

“You just heard me say that we have ex­pand­ed our step-down fa­cil­i­ties and will be ex­pand­ing it from 188 beds to 342. That is in prepa­ra­tion for all even­tu­al­i­ties, whether it’s due to an elec­tion, whether it’s due to Delta, whether it’s due to Omi­cron, whether it’s due to any gath­er­ing.”

On fears over the Omi­cron vari­ant, Deyals­ingh urged peo­ple not to mis­in­ter­pret pre­lim­i­nary stud­ies on the sever­i­ty of its in­fec­tion to mean the vari­ant does not war­rant con­cern.

“Those are some ini­tial find­ings in small pop­u­la­tions of peo­ple. We still don’t know,” he said.

“The key take­away is to treat Omi­corn and its ar­rival in Trinidad and To­ba­go as se­ri­ous. Treat it as se­ri­ous­ly as we treat Delta. It is ear­ly days yet.”

With re­cent ad­mis­sions that the vari­ant could be among the pop­u­la­tion but yet to be de­tect­ed, Deyals­ingh said it is crit­i­cal every­one re­mains vig­i­lant.

“The vac­ci­nat­ed, you have that ex­tra lay­er of pro­tec­tion. How­ev­er, you still need to prac­tice the pub­lic health mea­sures of wear­ing your mask es­pe­cial­ly, wash­ing your hands, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and thank you for be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed,” Deyals­ingh said.

This ad­vice, he said, need­ed to be more strict­ly ad­hered to by the un­vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion “be­cause you don’t have that ex­tra lay­er of pro­tec­tion that a vac­cine will give you.”

While the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom have ad­just­ed the time­frame for neg­a­tive PCR tests be­fore en­try due to Omi­cron, the Min­is­ter of Health said there will not be any such changes in T&T yet.

He not­ed the min­istry is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly and will ad­vise the pub­lic on any changes to the bor­der pro­to­cols.


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