Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Omi­cron vari­ant of con­cern has now been de­tect­ed in cir­cu­la­tion among the pop­u­la­tion.

The case in ques­tion was one of two peo­ple an­nounced yes­ter­day to as the newest dis­cov­er­ies of the vari­ant on our shores.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health, the per­son had no re­cent trav­el his­to­ry or re­cent con­tact with a COVID-19 pos­i­tive per­son. The per­son was de­tect­ed by the St Au­gus­tine Med­ical Lab­o­ra­to­ry (STAML) on Sat­ur­day night.

“We now be­lieve we have the first sus­pect­ed cas­es of com­mu­ni­ty spread which was con­firmed ear­ly this morn­ing,” STAML di­rec­tor Dr Shari Ram­saran told Guardian Me­dia.

“This per­son was test­ed pos­i­tive yes­ter­day (Sat­ur­day). The ge­net­ic se­quenc­ing was per­formed by STAML and con­firmed last night and the sam­ple was sent off to the pub­lic health lab last night and the sam­ple was re­con­firmed this morn­ing by UWI.”

STAML founder Dr Bal Ram­saran said the lab con­ducts se­quenc­ing us­ing a PCR method which is con­firmed by the team at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

“We’ve iden­ti­fied all the oth­er vari­ants. We’re do­ing this (a) long time now and we have cross-checked our re­sults in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and they are al­ways to 100 per cent,” he said.

The STAML di­rec­tor was un­will­ing to di­vulge any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the case due to pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, un­der­stands the pa­tient is a mild­ly symp­to­matic male.

Health of­fi­cials have al­ways main­tained that it was in­evitable that the vari­ant would ar­rive on T&T’s shores and be­gin cir­cu­lat­ing among the pop­u­la­tion.

Dr Joanne Paul pre­vi­ous­ly fore­cast that with its high­er trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty, it will like­ly take hold and be­come the dom­i­nant strain in cir­cu­la­tion.

The com­mu­ni­ty case brings the num­ber of Omi­cron cas­es to be de­tect­ed lo­cal­ly up to five.

The fourth per­son (the oth­er case an­nounced yes­ter­day), re­cent­ly re­turned to Trinidad from the Unit­ed States via Puer­to Ri­co.

“As a re­sult of their pos­i­tive COVID-19 re­sults both pa­tients were iso­lat­ed. The pa­tients will re­main in iso­la­tion un­til they meet the en­hanced dis­charge cri­te­ria for per­sons with COVID-19 Vari­ants of Con­cern. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, con­tacts of the pos­i­tive Omi­cron COVID-19 cas­es have been quar­an­tined,” the Min­istry of Health said in a news re­lease.

“Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO), to date, 89 coun­tries have con­firmed cas­es of the Omi­cron Vari­ant of Con­cern. Re­search has sug­gest­ed that this vari­ant is more eas­i­ly spread from per­son to per­son as com­pared to pre­vi­ous vari­ants but fur­ther in­for­ma­tion is need­ed on its im­pact on per­sons who con­tract this vari­ant.”

The first per­son to be in­fect­ed with the Omi­cron vari­ant was de­tect­ed on Mon­day, De­cem­ber 13.

The per­son was a vac­ci­nat­ed woman who re­turned to T&T from New York via Pana­ma.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, the per­son board­ed the flight to New York with a pos­i­tive PCR test and left Pana­ma for T&T with a neg­a­tive anti­gen test.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion has since been launched and the woman is ex­pect­ed to be charged for breach­ing the trav­el pass.

On Sat­ur­day, the Min­is­ter of Health an­nounced two ad­di­tion­al im­port­ed cas­es of Omi­cron had been im­port­ed. This sec­ond case was from a flight di­vert­ed to Puer­to Ri­co be­fore com­ing to T&T where 16 pas­sen­gers sub­se­quent­ly test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

The third case was from a flight that ar­rived on De­cem­ber 8 from Mi­a­mi. The per­son lat­er be­came symp­to­matic on De­cem­ber 10 and pre­sent­ed for test­ing.