Sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

Re­vised quar­an­tine mea­sures for more peo­ple com­ing from abroad and heav­ier fil­tered masks for the pub­lic may be need­ed af­ter glob­al spread of the new COVID strain which is over 50 per cent more con­ta­gious than the cur­rent COVID-19 virus.

Bid­ding to pre­vent virus en­try via il­le­gals, the Health Min­istry yes­ter­day al­so ap­proached the Caribbean Pub­lic Health fa­cil­i­ty to test for the new strain among mi­grants who’ve test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

The emer­gence of the new strain will de­lay re­open­ing of T&T’s bor­ders.

“Vig­i­lance will have to be some­what more in­creased, in­clud­ing at air­ports…” said Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram yes­ter­day.

He spoke about the threat, re­ply­ing to queries from Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) mem­bers on the new strain.

Mem­bers of the Lo­cal Au­thor­i­ties, Ser­vice Com­mis­sions and Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties JSC, head­ed by Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh ques­tioned health of­fi­cials and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty man­age­ment.

Deyals­ingh who said the Min­istry of Health had done a very good job in con­tain­ing COVID-19, not­ed dan­gers of the new strain which emerged in the UK and South Africa.

If it en­ters T&T, Deyals­ingh said there will be “ma­jor, ma­jor chal­lenges strain­ing T&T’s health sys­tems.”

Paras­ram said the new strain is now in 38 coun­tries in­clud­ing Ja­maica. Oth­er parts of the Caribbean had it since last Sep­tem­ber. It’s a mat­ter of time be­fore those ar­eas have pos­i­tive cas­es, he added.

Paras­ram said mit­i­ga­tion ac­tion at T&T ports have been good enough and since bor­ders are closed to Cari­com neigh­bours T&T’s been able to keep the new strain out so far.

“It seems we’re start­ing over this new year and hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns like last year.”

The new strain was not­ed and thought to be cir­cu­lat­ing glob­al­ly since Sep­tem­ber. It was sug­gest­ed it was in the US long be­fore the “first” Col­orado case was found last month. He said that per­son would have got­ten it from some­one else there with­out trav­el­ling.

“We know so far it’s more than 50 per cent more in­fec­tious in na­ture, can spread from one per­son to an­oth­er much more quick­ly. Large First World coun­tries are be­ing over­run very quick­ly.”

Paras­ram said the first aim is to keep the virus out.

“We came un­der much scruti­ny as peo­ple want­ed to go home but pos­si­bil­i­ty of a new strain was al­ways at the back of our minds. Now we see it’s a re­al con­cern.”

“We’ll main­tain our quar­an­tine po­si­tions for now, look to see where else it’s spread­ing and ad­vise the Prime Min­is­ter what next step will be tak­en with quar­an­tine and the air­port.”

Quar­an­tine has al­ready been re­vised for peo­ple com­ing from the UK who have to do full 14-day state/state–su­per­vised stints.

“But in re­cent days with 38-plus coun­tries car­ry­ing the new strain, there has to be re­vi­sion in the way we do quar­an­ti­ning for oth­er coun­tries al­so. It’s a mat­ter for dis­cus­sion with the Prime Min­is­ter in com­ing days.”

He said quar­an­tine is most crit­i­cal af­ter air­port ar­rival. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of length­en­ing quar­an­tine back to 14 days al­so ex­ists.

“It‘s our best bet for con­tain­ing it at any le­git­i­mate port of en­try for now.”

Paras­ram said peo­ple com­ing through le­git­i­mate bor­ders are test­ed but there are peo­ple en­ter­ing il­le­gal­ly. Since T&T’s risk will “go ac­cord­ing to who en­ters our coun­try,” he said the Health Min­istry yes­ter­day ap­proached Caribbean Pub­lic Health lab to test for the new strain among COVID pos­i­tive tests from the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion to see “if that par­tic­u­lar part of the world has been so in­fect­ed.”

Paras­ram said the new strain would de­lay any date for re­open­ing T&T bor­ders.

A Health Min­istry sub-com­mit­tee had a rolling date for bor­der re­open­ing to con­sid­er. Paras­ram added, “Ear­li­er we all thought by Sep­tem­ber the pan­dem­ic would be de­clin­ing in var­i­ous states and we thought we‘d have tak­en a stag­gered-phased ap­proach to re­open­ing bor­ders to peo­ple from low-risk coun­tries.”

“But the new strain has put a damper on the way we were plan­ning to re­open. The de­ci­sion lies ul­ti­mate­ly with the Prime Min­is­ter but we’d make our rec­om­men­da­tion.”