Doctor, minister: Covid19 threat still real

PAHO/WHO representative Dr Erica Wheeler and Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh on Monday warned that the covid19 pandemic remains a very real threat to the Americas, of which TT is a part.

At the virtual health news conference, Wheeler said, "

We do have still an exponential growth of covid19 in the Americas about which we do need to be concerned."

She said between June 15 and 21, the number of covid19 cases in the US increased from 25,314 to 36,617.

For the same period in Brazil, Wheeler said there was "a vast increase" from 21,704 to 54,771 new covid19 cases.

On June 15, she said, China had 49 covid19 positive cases. But on June 21, because of measures the Chinese government took, that figure fell to 27 cases."So this virus is here with us. So we do actually need to be mindful and continue to institute all our public health and social measures that we have been discussing so far."

Deyalsingh said a brief he received from PAHO on Monday shows that covid19 "is not over."

Deyalsingh said PAHO is concerned that it took the Americas "three months to reach one million cases but less than three weeks to nearly double that number." Deyalsingh said this development affects "almost all countries in Latin America with whom we trade, with whom we have air travel with and some in the Caribbean." TT continued to import critical items such as food and pharmaceuticals while its borders are closed, he said.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram said the health, agriculture and trade ministries collaborate on issues like the importation of meat.

While TT's borders remain closed, Wheeler said, "There is little danger of someone coming into the country and bringing in covid 19."

But she added that once TT opens its borders, "There is always that risk, especially since we have just said that in the region of the Americas we are seeing an acceleration of covid19."

The issue for TT and any other country in such a situation, she explained, becomes the strength of its health system and "the ability to cope with an influx of perons, some of whom may very well have covid19." She also said a European strain of covid19 which caused an outbreak of new cases in China recently was not a mutation and its source is still to be identified.

Wheeler said all the research on covid19 to date shows that its method of transmission and its symptoms remain unchanged.

She agreed with WHO covid19 technical lead Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove that focus should be placed on people with covid19 rather than people who are asymptomatic. Wheeler explained the former are the people "who are in danger of spreading the disease to one or more persons that we need to be more concerned about."

On the latter, shesaid, "We cannot at this point in time identify precisely, globally, what percentage of any population is asymptomatic."