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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Omicron expected to be dominant strain within weeks

by

Carisa Lee
1272 days ago
20220110

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Health of­fi­cials have pre­dict­ed an in­crease in hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion for chil­dren in the com­ing weeks, as the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Omi­cron vari­ant is ex­pect­ed to be­come the dom­i­nant strain of COVID-19 in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We are go­ing to have an in­crease surge with the Omi­cron vari­ant. We are go­ing to see in­creased cas­es,” Se­nior Pae­di­atric Emer­gency Med­i­cine Spe­cial­ist at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) Dr Joanne Paul said.

Five chil­dren are cur­rent­ly in hos­pi­tal. Three are in crit­i­cal con­di­tion and ac­cord­ing to Dr Paul, there will be an in­crease in chil­dren be­ing hos­pi­talised.

“We are go­ing to see a three to five-fold in­crease in pae­di­atric ad­mis­sions to hos­pi­tal,” Dr Paul said.

Four of the pae­di­atric cas­es in the hos­pi­tal are in the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and one is be­ing treat­ed at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.

“Those who in Ari­ma are of course much more crit­i­cal,” she said.

The cas­es in­clude a two-year-old, an in­fant less than six-months-old, a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old.

Dr Paul, while speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, said the teenagers are not vac­ci­nat­ed and have co­mor­bidi­ties.

She said the range of age groups for pae­di­atric cas­es are main­ly ze­ro to five years old or ado­les­cent.

“They have shown lots fever so we’re hav­ing the fever fits (febrile seizure)…we will be see­ing lots of sore throat,” she ex­plained.

The Pae­di­atric Emer­gency Med­i­cine Spe­cial­ist said since more emerg­ing ev­i­dence sug­gests that the Omi­cron vari­ant is af­fect­ing the up­per res­pi­ra­to­ry tract they will see an up­surge in Croup (an in­fec­tion of the up­per air­way which ob­structs breath­ing and leads to a bark­ing cough) and Mul­ti­sys­tem In­flam­ma­to­ry Syn­drome (MIS-C), ac­cord­ing to trends seen in the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom.

“They usu­al­ly cough al­most like a seal-like bark­ing,” she ex­plained.

MIS-C in chil­dren is a con­di­tion where dif­fer­ent body parts can be­come in­flamed.

There have been 69 cas­es of MIS-C record­ed so far in this coun­try.

“The ma­jor risk fac­tor for chil­dren is obe­si­ty in terms of see­ing any ef­fect with Omi­cron,” she added.

Dr Paul said aside from the car­diac el­e­ment and the syn­dromes, obe­si­ty and sick­le cell are the ma­jor fac­tors with Omi­cron in terms of hav­ing se­vere man­i­fes­ta­tion in chil­dren to be hos­pi­talised and be­ing very sick.

“They saw signs of obe­si­ty as the main risk fac­tor more so with chil­dren in the hos­pi­tal,” she added.

Dr Paul rec­om­mend­ed that with the ex­pect­ed in­crease of COVID-19 ad­mis­sions to hos­pi­tals, par­ents of ado­les­cents (ages 12 to 17 years old) get their chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed as soon as pos­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly if they have any of these syn­dromes.

“We’re look­ing at kid­ney dis­ease, sick­le cell dis­ease, cere­bral pal­sy,” she said.

The doc­tor al­so sug­gest­ed that par­ents get a COVID-19 pack at home to deal with the sore throat and de­hy­dra­tion.

“So you have your Ibupro­fen, your Parac­eta­mol or your Vi­t­a­min C, you al­so make sure you have your Gesol or what­ev­er re­hy­dra­tion,” Dr Paul said.

She al­so sug­gest­ed that par­ents have hu­mid­i­fiers and saline nose drops to help their chil­dren with con­ges­tion.

“Li­aise with your fam­i­ly doc­tor…have their link there to make sure that you are well pre­pared,” Dr Paul ad­vised.

How­ev­er, Dr Paul said, the best way to pro­tect the young pop­u­la­tion and the vul­ner­a­ble groups is to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

Mean­while, fol­low­ing the deaths of 171 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple from COVID-19, Epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Av­ery Hinds said they have not been as­sign­ing the vac­cine types to these deaths as a de­nom­i­na­tor be­cause of the dis­pro­por­tion of vac­cines types ad­min­is­tered across the coun­try.

“There is a much larg­er pro­por­tion of one vac­cine than the oth­ers in cir­cu­la­tion the first place and that would gen­er­al­ly be re­flect­ed pro­por­tion­al­ly in those that have passed on,” he ex­plained.

Dr Hinds said the ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple who died had se­vere co­mor­bidi­ties.

He al­so said the length of time from when the per­son was vac­ci­nat­ed and them be­ing in­fect­ed, al­so played a fac­tor.

Dr Hinds said that is why tak­ing the boost­er shot is im­por­tant.


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