An­na-Lisa Paul

Al­though no cas­es of the newest COVID-19 vari­ant Omi­cron have been de­tect­ed in T&T, med­ical ex­perts warned that it is not a mat­ter of if it does it get here, but rather when it does. Chris­tine Car­ring­ton, Pro­fes­sor of Mol­e­c­u­lar Ge­net­ics and Vi­rol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), urged the pub­lic not to let their guard down when she spoke dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s (MOH) vir­tu­al brief­ing yes­ter­day.

Car­ring­ton said the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) des­ig­nat­ed Omi­cron as the fifth vari­ant of con­cern on No­vem­ber 26. It was first re­port­ed to the WHO by South Africa on No­vem­ber 24 fol­low­ing con­fir­ma­tion in sam­ples that had been tak­en for test­ing since No­vem­ber 11. The first sam­ple had been tak­en from a pa­tient in Botswana on No­vem­ber 9 – which meant the vari­ant had been in cir­cu­la­tion for at least two weeks be­fore it was even de­tect­ed.

So far, cas­es have been con­firmed in trav­ellers en­ter­ing Hong Hong, Is­rael and Bel­gium from South Africa, Malawi and Egypt via Turkey.

Car­ring­ton said Omi­cron is a heav­i­ly mu­tat­ed strain with 32 known mu­ta­tions in the spike gene which South African of­fi­cials be­lieve was re­spon­si­ble for a sharp rise in cas­es.

Not­ing that Omi­cron could be even more trans­mis­si­ble than the Delta vari­ant, she said: “There is pre­lim­i­nary ev­i­dence that Omi­cron is more eas­i­ly spread than oth­er vari­ants of con­cern.

“There is pre­lim­i­nary ev­i­dence that it is more like­ly to cause re-in­fec­tion, sug­gest­ing that it is less sen­si­tive to in­fec­tion-in­duced im­mu­ni­ty. And, it con­tains mu­ta­tions that may cause it to be less sen­si­tive to vac­cine-in­duced im­mu­ni­ty.”

Car­ring­ton said all of these find­ings are cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed and cas­es are spread­ing in al­most all provinces in South African which is very con­cern­ing. She ad­mit­ted there is a knowl­edge gap re­lat­ing to whether or not Omi­cron is as­so­ci­at­ed with more se­vere dis­ease, but as­sured: “There is no ev­i­dence at this point to sug­gest that it is more lethal and there is no rea­son to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as­sume that it is.”

Com­ment­ing on the glob­al spread and evo­lu­tion of the COVID-19 virus so far, Car­ring­ton ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue ad­her­ing to pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions and wear masks, wash hands, so­cial dis­tance, in­crease or im­prove in­door ven­ti­la­tion, avoid crowd­ed spaces and get vac­ci­nat­ed.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said as of mid­night on No­vem­ber 26, trav­el re­stric­tions were im­posed on eight na­tions—Botswana, Eswa­ti­ni (for­mer­ly known as Swazi­land), Lesotho, Malawi, Mozam­bique, Namib­ia, South Africa and Zim­bab­we.

He re­peat­ed the call for lo­cals to get vac­ci­nat­ed at any of the 109 cen­tres where the ser­vice is avail­able.

Deyals­ingh said a vac­cine can help per­sons achieve some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy which would help them in their in­ter­ac­tion with oth­ers dur­ing the up­com­ing hol­i­day pe­ri­od and in­to 2022.

“Cur­rent­ly, non-na­tion­als who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed are not al­lowed en­try in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Na­tion­als can come in from these coun­tries but they will have to go in­to manda­to­ry state-su­per­vised quar­an­tine for no less than 14 days at your own ex­pense,” the min­is­ter said.

He de­fend­ed the coun­try’s tra­di­tion­al and par­al­lel health­care sys­tems against claims that ser­vice is be­ing com­pro­mised due to em­ploy­ee burn-out, Deyals­ingh said lifestyle choic­es and in­di­vid­ual at­ten­tion to health care gen­er­al­ly is to be blamed for the 2,000 plus deaths from the COVID-19 virus.

“The par­al­lel health­care sys­tem can­not take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for 2,000 deaths. The deaths over the past year are a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by all of us.

“We have been urg­ing peo­ple from day one that the im­pact of your health sta­tus, es­pe­cial­ly if you are a non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­ease pa­tient, is go­ing to im­pact on your care,” Deyals­ingh said.

The min­is­ter said T&T had a rep­u­ta­tion for be­ing among the coun­tries with the high­est rates for di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion.

“We have been plead­ing with the pub­lic to know your num­bers, to ex­er­cise, to eat prop­er­ly, so I dis­count the blame that is try­ing to be put there,” he said

Point­ing to lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al fig­ures that show the un­vac­ci­nat­ed are the ones with the high­est mor­tal­i­ty and fa­tal­i­ty rates, Deyals­ingh said: “I can dis­count the as­crib­ing of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.”

Re­gard­ing claims that cus­toms of­fi­cers are seiz­ing rapid anti­gen test­ing kits from ar­riv­ing pas­sen­gers at the air­port, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said in­di­vid­u­als must have au­tho­riza­tion from the Chem­istry Food and Drug Di­vi­sion along with in­voic­es and oth­er doc­u­ments.

“If those pieces of in­for­ma­tion that are re­quired are not present, then, of course, Cus­toms will seize that prod­uct un­til such a time that they can ei­ther pre­pare the nec­es­sary doc­u­ment or ap­ply to the Food and Drug Di­vi­sion,” he said.

The COVID-19 up­date from the Min­istry of Health showed that 21 more peo­ple have died and 720 peo­ple test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease in the last 24 hours. The to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es in the coun­try is now 10,005.