As Trinidad and To­ba­go record­ed its largest num­ber of in­fec­tions since the start of the pan­dem­ic in T&T, health of­fi­cials are send­ing a strong warn­ing that young peo­ple with­out co­mor­bidi­ties are dy­ing from the virus.

Four peo­ple, in­clud­ing a 42-year-old man, are among the lat­est vic­tims, push­ing the toll to 189.

The Health Min­istry yes­ter­day an­nounced a record 399 new in­fec­tions.

Health of­fi­cials are now sig­nalling that the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem has on­ly sev­en more days at this rate be­fore col­laps­ing as the num­ber of pos­i­tive ac­tive cas­es reached 3,024 up to 4 pm yes­ter­day.

As she im­plored younger peo­ple who were not pre­vi­ous­ly ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the virus to heed the warn­ings, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer (PMO), Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards said, “Young peo­ple, we are see­ing deaths and sud­den deaths from the 30s on­wards. Please don’t think you are im­mune.”

She sought to dri­ve home just how dire the sit­u­a­tion is now as she spoke dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day and re­ferred to COVID-19 as the great equal­iz­er as it was no re­specter of class, ed­u­ca­tion, age, sex, na­tion­al­i­ty, eth­nic­i­ty and fi­nan­cial sta­tus.

“This con­cept of a bub­ble that I have been hear­ing tout­ed around does not work,” she said, adding, “Dif­fer­ent per­sons from dif­fer­ent house­holds car­ry dif­fer­ent ex­po­sure risks, so by you say­ing you will be lim­ing, or zess­ing, or wess­ing, or what­ev­er term you want to use with the same group of per­sons…while you are in­ter­act­ing with per­sons at the su­per­mar­ket or at your work­place, it means you have a dif­fer­ent lev­el of ex­po­sure.”

Ab­dool-Richards urged the pop­u­lace to lis­ten to the ad­vice from health of­fi­cial, say­ing this could save their lives and that of their loved ones al­so.

She lament­ed the long lines of peo­ple seen buy­ing food in Wood­brook on Mon­day, some of whom were not wear­ing their face masks prop­er­ly.

It was a heart­felt plea that Ab­dool-Richards made as she went on, “I am ask­ing every­one to stop the co-min­gling, stop the mix­ing of per­sons. It is be­com­ing over­bur­den­ing to our health sys­tem and it may im­pact on the treat­ment of your rel­a­tives.”

“Our ward oc­cu­pan­cy rates have in­creased with­in 24-hours from 50 to 60 per cent which is a ten per cent in­crease, and our ICU oc­cu­pan­cy rates have de­creased from 50 per cent to 40 per cent. I’d like to re­it­er­ate that the de­crease in ICU rates is not due to the dis­charge of pa­tients at the step­down but un­for­tu­nate­ly, due to the deaths of pa­tients.”

She said hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy moved from 48 per cent on May 3, to 50 per cent on May 4 and to 58 per cent that very evening.

Up to 9 am yes­ter­day, there was a to­tal of 264 per­sons hos­pi­talised, with 42 more await­ing ad­mis­sion. This fig­ure was ex­pect­ed to in­crease by last evening.

The PMO said pa­tients dis­play­ing mild symp­toms were now re­quir­ing hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion from three days on­wards, while those re­quir­ing in­ten­sive care need­ed be­tween 12 and 21 days of hos­pi­talised at­ten­tion.

“The High De­pen­den­cy Unit oc­cu­pan­cy had in­creased overnight from 40 per cent to 70 per cent,” Ab­dool-Richards said.

She re­mind­ed the pop­u­la­tion that hos­pi­tal beds were a fi­nite re­source.

Mean­while, 115 more beds were added to the sys­tem on May 1, while the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal has been tran­si­tioned in­to yet an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty to treat this group of pa­tients.

Re­port­ing that a to­tal of 542 out of 1,700 beds with sup­port­ing staff had been avail­able to treat COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients from the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic, Ab­dool-Richards said if num­bers con­tin­ued as they are it would take sev­en days to fill the re­main­ing 226 beds as there were 316 pa­tients in hos­pi­tals up to 9 am yes­ter­day.

A repa­tri­a­tion flight with 89 per­sons from Cana­da was ex­pect­ed to ar­rive yes­ter­day while a 120-pas­sen­ger flight from Bar­ba­dos is sched­uled to ar­rive to­mor­row which will fo­cus main­ly on the safe re­turn of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents.

Mean­while, a flight from Mi­a­mi is sched­uled to bring in a fur­ther 140 peo­ple on May 15.

With Moth­er’s Day due to be cel­e­brat­ed on May 9, Ab­dool-Richards said, “We would not want to lose our moth­ers, our sis­ters and our daugh­ters pri­or to Moth­er’s Day, and giv­en the trend of per­sons be­ing hos­pi­talised and per­sons who are dy­ing on a dai­ly ba­sis, we need to have per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and be vig­i­lant. Let us be our rel­a­tive’s keep­er. Let us be our neigh­bours’ keep­er and our co-work­ers’.”

Asked to say if the P1 vari­ant (Brazil­ian vari­ant) could be the cause of the in­creased mor­bid­i­ty rates T&T is now record­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly among the younger de­mo­graph­ic, epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Av­ery Hinds said there is no con­crete ev­i­dence that it was “af­fect­ing younger per­sons in a pre­ferred or pref­er­en­tial man­ner.

“But what we are see­ing is a wide cross-sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion be­ing af­fect­ed,” he said.