Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

A repa­tri­at­ed na­tion­al has brought the new strain of COVID-19 (Vari­ant B117) from the Unit­ed King­dom in­to the coun­try, in­creas­ing fears now over whether health of­fi­cials will be able to con­trol its spread.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health con­firmed the mu­tant strain was found in a repa­tri­at­ed na­tion­al.

“The pres­ence of the vari­ant was con­firmed via a gene se­quenc­ing study at the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, which has been test­ing COVID-19 pos­i­tive sam­ples col­lect­ed since Sep­tem­ber 2020,” the min­istry said.

The min­istry not­ed that all COVID-19 pro­to­cols were ob­served to pre­vent the strain’s in­tro­duc­tion in­to the pop­u­la­tion.

“The pa­tient is a re­turned na­tion­al who trav­elled from the Unit­ed King­dom. As per ex­ist­ing quar­an­tine pro­to­cols, the na­tion­al pro­vid­ed a neg­a­tive PCR test which was tak­en 72-hours pri­or to de­par­ture from the Unit­ed King­dom. Up­on ar­rival in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the na­tion­al was im­me­di­ate­ly placed in state quar­an­tine, in a sin­gle room,” the re­lease said.

“The pa­tient was trans­ferred di­rect­ly to an iso­la­tion area at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty once the pos­i­tive COVID-19 re­sult was con­firmed.”

In re­sponse to the emer­gence of the new strain, the min­istry had in­creased its quar­an­tine pro­to­col for trav­ellers com­ing in­to T&T with­in 14 days of leav­ing the Unit­ed King­dom. It ex­tend­ed the manda­to­ry quar­an­tine pe­ri­od at a state fa­cil­i­ty or state-su­per­vised fa­cil­i­ty up­on ar­rival in the coun­try from sev­en days to 14.

The dis­cov­ery of the vari­ant in a repa­tri­at­ed na­tion­al would not have come as a sur­prise to health of­fi­cials, how­ev­er, as al­most one month ago, on De­cem­ber 23, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the prob­a­bil­i­ty of it oc­cur­ring was low but not im­pos­si­ble.

“Well, I sup­pose there’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty that any­thing can hap­pen. But be­cause our bor­ders re­main closed, be­cause we man­age the repa­tri­a­tion through test­ing and quar­an­tine, it is hope­ful­ly less like­ly to get in than oth­er coun­tries who have re­mained with an open bor­der,” he said.

The COVID-19 vari­ant emerged in Sep­tem­ber and was con­firmed by UK of­fi­cials on De­cem­ber 14. It has been re­spon­si­ble for height­ened lock­downs in that coun­try. There is cur­rent­ly no ev­i­dence that the strain is more dead­ly, vir­ile or com­pro­mis­es vac­cines. How­ev­er, ex­perts be­lieve it is at least 50 per cent more trans­mis­si­ble - spread­ing more eas­i­ly from per­son to per­son. It is one of three strains cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of ex­perts glob­al­ly along with the South African vari­ant and Brazil vari­ant.

The Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion not­ed that while it may not be more dead­ly, “an in­crease in the num­ber of cas­es will put more strain on health care re­sources, lead to more hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions, and po­ten­tial­ly more deaths.”

It has ad­vised rig­or­ous and in­creased com­pli­ance with pub­lic health mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies, such as vac­ci­na­tion, phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, use of masks, hand hy­giene, and that iso­la­tion and quar­an­tine will be es­sen­tial to lim­it­ing the spread.

Com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day, Pro­fes­sor of Vet­eri­nary Vi­rol­o­gy Dr Christo­pher Oura said the strain’s dis­cov­ery is cause for con­cern.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go should be wor­ried. I’m cur­rent­ly in the UK and this virus, this new vari­ant, is re­al­ly run­ning a ri­ot here. It is able to trans­mit more ef­fi­cient­ly than the orig­i­nal vari­ant and we’re see­ing that at the mo­ment,” he told Guardian Me­dia. 

“It’s cer­tain­ly not a vari­ant we want to get in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go (pop­u­la­tion). We want to do our lev­el best to stop it com­ing in.”

The dis­cov­ery al­so had Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­mit­ting yes­ter­day that he was con­cerned. 

Speak­ing af­ter a tour the APT James in Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go, Row­ley said it should be a re­minder that “we are in a pan­dem­ic” which is not get­ting bet­ter.

Row­ley said he has been wor­ried from day one of the pan­dem­ic and begged peo­ple to ad­here to the pub­lic health pro­to­cols in place.

“The dif­fer­ence in the new strain is that it is eas­i­er for the virus to be trans­mit­ted, so if you were sky­lark­ing with the mask, if you were sky­lark­ing with the so­cial dis­tanc­ing and if you were sky­lark­ing with the par­ty­ing, it is eas­i­er now to be in­fect­ed,” Row­ley said.