CMO: Daily covid19 cases on the decline

Over the last few weeks there has been a decrease in the number of new daily cases in TT.

Speaking at the covid19 virtual press briefing on Saturday, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Roshan Parasram said at the moment there are about 40 cases per day, a reduction from an average of 70 with the highest being around 100 in the middle of August. The aim is to get that number down to 20 or less.

“With the continued efforts of the public in terms of maintaining the pubic health measures, I think we will continue to see that downward trend occurring barring any unforeseen circumstances.”

On Saturday there were 35 new cases of covid19 in TT, bringing the total number of positive cases to 4,312.

According to the Health Ministry’s covid19 update on Saturday evening, the number of deaths remains at 70 but the number of active cases decreased by 28 to 2,057 due to 54 recovered community cases and nine people being discharged from public health facilities. That brought the number of people discharged to 914, and the number of recovered community cases to 1,271.

On Saturday morning those hospitalised were 101 patients. Fifty-four were at Couva hospital with five in the intensive care unit and eight in the high dependency unit. Twenty-four were at Caura, six at Arima, one at Augustus Long, ten at St Ann’s, five at Scarborough and one at Signal Hill.

At step-down facilities were 111 people – six at UWI Debe, 52 at UWI Canada Hall, 45 at UWI, Freedom Hall, and eight in Tobago.

The number of unique patient tests was 27,481, and the number of repeated tests was 3,063.

According to Parasram, 53 per cent of covid19 positive people were males and 47 per cent females. Of the total number of cases, 16.47 per cent were in the less than 25 age group, 56.43 per cent were between 25 and 48, 14.36 per cent were in the 50 to 59 group, and 17 per cent were over 60.

He said there were six different subtypes or strains of covid19 with subtle differences. UWI was partnering with CARPHA and the Health Ministry to take taking samples patients from both phase one and two throughout the Caribbean to determine which subtypes were in the region, and if there were any changes between the two phases.

However, he believed any changes in transmission levels and symptoms were based more who was being infected rather than the strain of the virus. Therefore the ministry was looking to target media and communications campaigns at the 30 to 49 age group of the country’s population in the hopes of reducing covid19 numbers in those groups.

He added that TT now had a 1,300 samples per day testing capacity while, generally, 600 to 700 samples were submitted in a day. He said TT also ordered rapid antigen tests so people could get covid19 results in 15 to 20 minutes and it was expected to arrive in early November.