JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 11, 2025

The importance of research into our own Covid-19 experiences

by

1885 days ago
20200513

Sev­er­al days ago, the Min­istry of Health of T&T an­nounced plans to be­gin a se­ries of COVID-19-re­lat­ed re­search stud­ies and its re­sult­ing im­pact on this coun­try.

The pro­posed aim is to analyse our re­sponse and pro­vide a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the lo­cal pat­tern of dis­ease spread as well pre­pare for the fu­ture.

As ex­pressed by the Min­is­ter of Health, “This da­ta must not go to waste, but it should be used to the ben­e­fit of T&T, not on­ly for the sec­ond or third waves, but to al­so in­form how fu­ture gov­ern­ments re­spond to pan­demics.”

This is in­deed im­por­tant and nec­es­sary. Not on­ly to doc­u­ment our find­ings, which in­deed will add to the cur­rent med­ical lit­er­a­ture, but to use ro­bust re­search method­ol­o­gy to ex­am­ine our ex­pe­ri­ence with the nov­el coro­n­avirus, which will be of par­tic­u­lar ben­e­fit to us as a coun­try and a re­gion.

The WHO has con­tin­ued to em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of sup­port­ing glob­al re­search pri­or­i­ties in the hope of learn­ing from the cur­rent pan­dem­ic and main­tain­ing a co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse while al­so prepar­ing for the next un­fore­seen epi­dem­ic.

As with any new dis­ease, there is a thirst for in­for­ma­tion. Good qual­i­ty stud­ies that ask the right ques­tions, use re­pro­ducible and un­bi­ased method­ol­o­gy and draw rea­son­able con­clu­sions are ur­gent­ly need­ed. These con­clu­sions must ul­ti­mate­ly be sup­port­ed by good hard ev­i­dence.

With the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, health care providers, and pub­lic health of­fi­cials are al­so re­quired to look for re­al-time in­for­ma­tion to help make de­ci­sions that re­duce the im­pact of the dis­ease.

Our ex­pe­ri­ence with COVID-19 here in T&T has been some­what dif­fer­ent from many around the world and there is a need to fur­ther delve in­to this.

The use of a sta­tis­ti­cal mod­el may be help­ful here. Mod­el­ing is a way to use what we know about a dis­ease now, to help us un­der­stand what could hap­pen in the fu­ture and how our ac­tions may af­fect that.

By cre­at­ing our own dis­ease mod­el, we can in­clude our lo­cal da­ta, re­move bias, and en­sure valu­able in­sights and in­for­ma­tion are not over­looked. What we learn from these mod­els is just one fac­tor to con­sid­er in mak­ing de­ci­sions like stay­ing at home and so­cial dis­tanc­ing. This is just as cru­cial in de­ter­min­ing when to re­lax mea­sures and how best to do this in or­der to pro­tect the health of our cit­i­zens.

We may not be at the fore­front in clin­i­cal drug tri­als or vac­cine stud­ies, but T&T can hold its own by pro­vid­ing the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty with our own da­ta and our own unique ex­pe­ri­ence.

Our pa­tients may have pre­sent­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than those in oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports and our man­age­ment strate­gies may have been sim­i­lar­ly di­verse. It is our du­ty to ex­plore this, re­port it and pub­lish it.

Re­search is a vi­tal as­pect of any strat­e­gy to stop Covid-19. It is equal­ly im­por­tant how­ev­er that this is done in the right way. The fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of clin­i­cal re­search must ap­ply.

This in­cludes en­sur­ing eth­i­cal ap­proval is ob­tained from rel­e­vant com­mit­tees be­fore em­bark­ing up­on any stud­ies and us­ing sys­tems that al­ways safe­guard per­son­al da­ta and pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

Com­plete trans­paren­cy is crit­i­cal, and all re­ports must be sub­ject­ed to in­tense scruti­ny and ex­pert re­view by the in­ter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty.

It is en­cour­ag­ing that our gov­ern­ment has em­pha­sised the need for re­search and doc­u­men­ta­tion of our COVID-19 ex­pe­ri­ence as it al­lows us to bet­ter un­der­stand and man­age this dis­ease in our lo­cal set­ting. It al­so en­sures that ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion is re­layed to the pub­lic while main­tain­ing safe­ty as a pri­or­i­ty.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored