Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne warns that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is go­ing to get worse be­fore it gets bet­ter.

And while the pub­lic tries to pro­tect them­selves by wear­ing cloth masks, she cau­tioned that high-end per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) such as N-95 masks and gloves should be re­served for health­care work­ers due to glob­al short­ages.

With­out this PPE, she said, front line work­ers could be in­fect­ed and lead to a dev­as­tat­ing fail­ure of a coun­try’s health and re­sponse sys­tem. PA­HO al­so cau­tions that masks by them­selves can­not pro­tect against COVID-19.

Last week, the Min­istry of Health in Trinidad and To­ba­go changed its stance on the wear­ing of face masks, rec­om­mend­ing that cit­i­zens wear cloth masks in pub­lic; keep­ing with rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing out of the Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) in the Unit­ed States.

How­ev­er much like the min­istry, PA­HO as­sis­tant di­rec­tor Jar­bas Bar­bosa re­it­er­at­ed that cloth masks by them­selves do not pro­tect against COVID-19 and should be used in con­junc­tion with oth­er mea­sures such as fre­quent hand wash­ing.

At this junc­ture of the pan­dem­ic, many cit­i­zens are aware that cloth masks are not as ef­fec­tive as N-95 or sur­gi­cal masks. How­ev­er, Dr Eti­enne urged the pub­lic to re­frain from us­ing these types of PPE.

“Short­ages of the most ba­sic pro­tec­tion equip­ment leave doc­tors, nurs­es and oth­er front line work­ers dan­ger­ous­ly vul­ner­a­ble as they care for COVID-19 pa­tients. Lim­it­ed sup­plies of gloves, med­ical masks, res­pi­ra­tors, gog­gles and gowns can lead to a wave of pre­ventable in­fec­tions among health work­ers and threat­en our abil­i­ty to cope with the pan­dem­ic,” she said.

“The pan­dem­ic is ac­cel­er­at­ing rapid­ly and I urge gov­ern­ments to pre­pare and re­spond at the same speed. The num­ber of new COVID-19 cas­es and fa­tal­i­ties is ris­ing and we ex­pect it to con­tin­ue to rise in the re­gion...the sit­u­a­tion is go­ing to get worse be­fore it gets bet­ter,” Dr Eti­enne said as she con­tex­tu­alised what the fu­ture holds for the re­gion cit­ing a dou­bling in the num­bers of new con­firmed cas­es and fa­tal­i­ties with­in the past sev­en days.

“All of us need to be pre­pared for more dif­fi­cult weeks ahead.”