Rishard Khan

Rishard.Khan@guardian.co.tt

It seems as if in­ci­dents of large gath­er­ings are be­com­ing more com­mon­place dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic de­spite nu­mer­ous warn­ings and reg­u­la­tions against it.

The preva­lence of these events is more pro­nounced when jux­ta­posed with the be­hav­iour dur­ing the start of the out­break lo­cal­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist and mem­ber of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ COVID-19 Task Force, Dr Kati­ja Khan, this is the ef­fects of pan­dem­ic fa­tigue.

“There is a term called pan­dem­ic fa­tigue and that speaks to the frus­tra­tion and the de­crease in mo­ti­va­tion peo­ple might have en­dur­ing all this anx­i­ety and lock­down re­stric­tions and pub­lic health pre­ven­tion mea­sures for such a long pe­ri­od of time,” Dr Khan told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

She al­so said it could be a sense of com­pla­cen­cy among some in the pop­u­la­tion as the lo­cal out­break con­tin­ues to di­min­ish.

“Peo­ple may think it’s safe,” she said.

Over the week­end, some 71 peo­ple were tick­et­ed by po­lice at a pri­vate par­ty at the Pas­sage to Asia restau­rant in Ch­agua­nas. Videos of the event cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia show at­ten­dees singing and danc­ing with pop­u­lar artiste with­out face­masks on.

Videos al­so cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia of large crowds at Tyri­co beach dis­re­gard­ing health ad­vice and not wear­ing masks. Just one week ago dozens of peo­ple al­so gath­ered for a par­ty at No Man’s Land in To­ba­go where pa­trons were al­so re­port­ed­ly dis­re­gard­ing the pub­lic health pro­to­cols.

Dr Khan be­lieves these in­ci­dents would con­tin­ue to oc­cur as the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues and the fa­tigue sets in.

“And it’s like­ly that as this pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues and un­til we have a vac­cine that is more wide­ly avail­able, more and more peo­ple are go­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence this,” she said.

She called on cit­i­zens to hold the line and re­mem­ber that the pan­dem­ic is still on­go­ing. She al­so called for cit­i­zens to “#talk­toy­ourpeo­ple.”

“We need to speak up against these mass gath­er­ings, these pub­lic and pri­vate fetes which is ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour,” she said.

This, she said was es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant as there may be those who would try to sal­vage some sort of a par­ty dur­ing this time now that Car­ni­val has been can­celled.