KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardi­na.co.tt

As Trinidad & To­ba­go con­tin­ues to re­open var­i­ous busi­ness sec­tors, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) warns that the Delta Vari­ant cur­rent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing in the re­gion is 60 per cent more trans­mis­si­ble than the orig­i­nal COVID-19 dis­ease.

As a re­sult, PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne says now is not the time for coun­tries to drop their guards against COVID-19. It comes as weeks of de­creas­ing in­fec­tions and deaths in the Amer­i­c­as came to an end.

At PA­HO’s week­ly COVID-19 brief­ing yes­ter­day, Eti­enne said the re­gion record­ed an es­ti­mat­ed 1.26 mil­lion new cas­es and 29,000 deaths in the past week. In the pre­vi­ous week, PA­HO re­port­ed 967,000 new cas­es and 22,000 deaths.

“We do not know if Delta will be­come the pre­dom­i­nant vari­ant in the re­gion as has hap­pened in some coun­tries. But let me say that this is a re­minder to all of us that the pan­dem­ic is not over yet. The ev­i­dence we are see­ing is show­ing that Delta can be up to 60 per cent more trans­mis­si­ble than the orig­i­nal virus. And so this means that we ab­solute­ly can­not re­lax pub­lic health mea­sures,” Eti­enne said.

All Vari­ants of Con­cern (Al­pha, Be­ta, Gam­ma and Delta) are cur­rent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing in the re­gion. Two weeks ago, PA­HO con­firmed the pres­ence of the Delta Vari­ant in the Caribbean, with cas­es re­port­ed in Bar­ba­dos, Guade­loupe, Mar­tinique, Saint Mar­tin, Sa­ba and Aru­ba. Eti­enne said that the Al­pha and Delta car­ry an in­creased risk of hos­pi­tal­iza­tion in those in­fect­ed.

So far, PA­HO’s ge­nomics sur­veil­lance net­work re­port­ed the pres­ence of at least one Vari­ant of Con­cern in 49 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries in the re­gion.

It de­tect­ed the Al­pha in 47, the Gam­ma in 31, the Be­ta in 20 and Delta in 20.

“The more these trans­mis­si­ble vari­ants cir­cu­late in our com­mu­ni­ties, the more cas­es will spike, health ser­vices will strug­gle, and peo­ple will die.”

Eti­enne said vac­ci­na­tion is the best hope to end the pan­dem­ic and re­duce the surge of new vari­ants.

How­ev­er, on­ly 16.6 per cent of the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca is vac­ci­nat­ed as vac­cine ac­cess con­tin­ues to be a strug­gle. Eti­enne said PA­HO launched a plan to im­prove ac­cess to ad­di­tion­al COVID-19 vac­cines for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean to com­ple­ment the work of the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty and do­na­tions from oth­er coun­tries.

Should there be a surge, she warns that the more the virus trans­mits, the greater the chance for more vari­ants to emerge.

With T&T record­ing over 1048 COVID-19 death from 37,771 cas­es up to Tues­day, there are con­cerns about the dif­fer­ence in rates among Caribbean coun­tries.

In­ci­dent Man­ag­er for COVID-19, Dr Syl­vain Aldighieri, said that re­gard­ing the rate of new in­fec­tions, the main fac­tor in­flu­enc­ing this is the strict ap­pli­ca­tion of pub­lic health and trav­el-re­lat­ed mea­sures.

Aldighieri said most Caribbean coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries are re­port­ing com­mu­ni­ty trans­mis­sions while some re­port clus­ters or spo­radic cas­es. “As of to­day, on­ly two ter­ri­to­ries are re­port­ing no cas­es,” Aldighieri said.

Re­gard­ing the dis­par­i­ties in mor­tal­i­ty rates, he said the main fac­tors are the ac­cess to health ser­vices and the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the health sys­tem for im­ple­ment­ing strict pro­to­cols for sus­pect­ed and con­firmed pa­tients.

It ranges from the quar­an­tine of con­tacts, iso­la­tion of cas­es, fol­low up with the pa­tients to as­cer­tain their clin­i­cal sta­tus at home, ear­ly de­tec­tion of com­pli­ca­tions and ac­cess to health ser­vices, oxy­gen and med­ica­tion, and In­ten­sive Care Units, in­clud­ing health­care work­ers and surge ca­pac­i­ty dur­ing the peaks of trans­mis­sion.