KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With more and more chil­dren falling se­vere­ly ill with COVID-19, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) says sev­er­al coun­tries re­port­ed this trend as some younger pop­u­la­tions are not el­i­gi­ble for vac­ci­na­tion.

Last week, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Health Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards re­port­ed that three chil­dren, in­clud­ing one re­ceiv­ing in­ten­sive care treat­ment, were among those hos­pi­talised in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.

Re­spond­ing to T&T’s epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sit­u­a­tion at PA­HO’s week­ly me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, In­ci­dent Man­ag­er for COVID-19 Dr Syl­vain Aldighieri said this was ex­pect­ed.

He said sev­er­al coun­tries have re­port­ed in­creas­ing cas­es in the younger pop­u­la­tion, which is linked to greater ex­po­sure and the ab­sence of vac­ci­na­tions among the age groups. 

“We know that old­er age groups are usu­al­ly more care­ful with the con­trol mea­sures, stricter about the dis­tanc­ing and al­so that they have been pri­ori­tised for vac­ci­na­tion, in most of the coun­tries, in­clud­ing the Caribbean coun­tries.

“It is im­por­tant to men­tion that if a par­tic­u­lar vari­ant be­comes pre­dom­i­nant like the Delta Vari­ant at the mo­ment in most of the Caribbean, it is of course the one vari­ant that we are go­ing to find af­fect­ing most of the pop­u­la­tion, in­clud­ing ei­ther asymp­to­matic, mild or se­vere cas­es,” Aldighieri said.

He added that vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy was the prob­lem in most Caribbean coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly the Eng­lish and French-speak­ing na­tions.

This is the sit­u­a­tion as cas­es in­crease in the Caribbean while in­fec­tion de­crease in North and South Amer­i­ca and most Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries. 

As a re­sult, PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne en­cour­ages Caribbean coun­tries, where vac­ci­na­tions are heav­i­ly politi­cised, to train health work­ers so they pos­sess all the knowl­edge they need to re­spond to ques­tions about COVID-19 and the vac­cines.

Eti­enne said health work­ers were trust­ed sources, stress­ing that vac­cines will help end the pan­dem­ic. 

Over the last week, the Amer­i­c­as re­port­ed over 1.1 mil­lion new cas­es and just over 24,000 re­lat­ed deaths. 

Among Caribbean coun­tries, Bar­ba­dos re­port­ed its high­est num­ber of cas­es and deaths since the pan­dem­ic start­ed.

It fol­lowed a five-fold in­crease in in­fec­tions over the last month. Cas­es are al­so in­creas­ing in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Haiti, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, An­guil­la, and the Cay­man Is­lands. In­fec­tion rates are de­creas­ing in North Amer­i­ca but re­main high in Alas­ka and the mid-west of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

Mean­while, in Cana­da, cas­es are high in the North-West Ter­ri­to­ries, where the in­fec­tion rates are 10 times the na­tion­al av­er­age.

Most coun­tries in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca re­port­ed a de­cline in cas­es. How­ev­er, it re­mains high in Be­lize.

There is a sim­i­lar pat­tern in South Amer­i­ca, but there are spikes at the sub-na­tion­al lev­el in Venezuela and Chile.

Last week, the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) launched its strat­e­gy to vac­ci­nate 40 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion in every coun­try by the end of 2021. Across the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, 39 per cent of peo­ple are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. 

Eti­enne re­port­ed that 26 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries in the Amer­i­c­as al­ready im­mu­nised 40 per cent or more of their pop­u­la­tion. How­ev­er, cov­er­age re­mains low in some coun­tries.

Ja­maica, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Haiti, Guatemala, and Nicaragua have yet to reach 20 per cent of their pop­u­la­tions and re­quire spe­cial at­ten­tion to reach the WHO’s 40 per cent tar­get.

Across these coun­tries, vac­cine ac­cess has been a chal­lenge. Ja­maica has sup­ply de­lays.

The short­age of sy­ringes has de­layed im­mu­ni­sa­tion cam­paigns in Guatemala.

In Haiti, lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges hin­dered the roll­out of vac­cines.

With 4.9 per cent of COVID-19 pa­tients in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem vac­ci­nat­ed some peo­ple have con­cerns about vac­cine ef­fec­tive­ness.

Ad­dress­ing this last week, As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor Dr Jar­bas Bar­bosa ex­plained that each vac­cine has a dif­fer­ent ef­fi­ca­cy rate and used var­i­ous process­es to de­vel­op im­mu­ni­ty.

He said no vac­cine for any dis­ease has a 100 per cent ef­fi­ca­cy rate.

“Some peo­ple will get the vac­cine but would not de­vel­op pro­tec­tion against the dis­ease. It can be caused by some im­mu­ni­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics that some peo­ple have.

“We know for sure that the el­der­ly have a weak im­mune sys­tem, so the ef­fi­ca­cy rate can be less than the av­er­age pop­u­la­tion. So you have some very dif­fer­ent rea­sons that one per­son can get the vac­cine and not de­vel­op the pro­tec­tion,” Bar­bosa said.

He said if 4.5 per cent of hos­pi­talised pa­tients are vac­ci­nat­ed, it shows the vac­cines’ ef­fec­tive­ness against se­vere dis­ease, hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, and deaths.

It al­so showed that the pan­dem­ic is con­tin­u­ing most­ly through un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple.

He stressed that vac­cines pro­vide in­di­vid­ual pro­tec­tion, but al­so a col­lec­tive ef­fect as peo­ple who are vac­ci­nat­ed trans­mit less of the virus.

Once many peo­ple trans­mit less in a com­mu­ni­ty, the virus will have less op­por­tu­ni­ty to spread.

He said an­ti-vaxxers are not us­ing all the in­for­ma­tion that is avail­able to them.