TT faces a death a day if covid19 cases stop decreasing

The number of new daily cases of covid19 has plateaued at around 50, and if that number does not decrease, the Ministry of Health anticipates one death a day.

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh made the statement on Saturday at a press conference at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s after Chief Medical Officer, Dr Roshan Parasram, announced the death of another person, bringing the country’s covid19 death toll to 90.

Parasram said an additional 22 people had tested positive for the virus bringing the total to 5,043 but 3,221 had recovered. There are 1,570 in home isolation, 100 in quarantine, 38 in four step down facilities, and 115 in hospital. Of those, 1,726 were active cases.

Breaking down the hospital cases he said 61 were at Couva Hospital with five in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and four in the High Dependency Unit. There were 30 people at Caura Hospital, three in ICU at the Arima Hospital, and 21 at Fort George in Tobago.

Epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds said since August 25, TT has continued to see week-on-week decreases in the number of new cases of covid19 but those decreases had slowed down.

“While we had a 35 per cent decrease in the first week of the downward trend, the next week was 22 per cent, this last week has been 12 per cent so we are seeing that decrease, while we’re still going downward, that decrease is slowing.”

He added that the average number of daily cases was 50 and the death rate was around 1.7 per cent of the total positive cases.

Giving more detail, Parasram said the seven-day average of new cases was 53 and the death rate was 1.72 per cent. He said if the numbers decreased, the same demography of people continued to be infected, and the death rate remained the same, the number of deaths would decrease.

However, he said that depended on the category of people who gets infected. If more high-risk or elderly people get infected, the death rate would increase.

“So we want to keep that population, the vulnerable ones, safe as long as we can and get those numbers down on a daily basis so that we could actually have a consequential drop in the number of deaths as well.”

He said about five people died outside of the hospital setting. He therefore urged people in home quarantine to get to a health facility as quickly as possible if their symptoms escalate, for example if they had shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, vomiting, and diarrhoea.

He added that the ministry recently received 4,000 pulse oximeters which measure oxygen levels in the blood, and they would be distributed to covid19 positive people in home quarantine by early next week.

The Prime Minister stressed that there were relatively young and healthy people who got sick, went in to the parallel health system, and died quickly, especially those who did not know they had underlying health conditions.

“Covid is not just about picking off our senior citizens who had underlying health conditions who eventually succumbed. We have had a number of instances of people who did not fit into that category, who were infected, and who did not make it.”

In response to a question about covid19 vaccines, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said vaccines for TT would be sourced under the Covid19 Vaccine Global Access (Covax) Facility.

He explained Covax was a funding mechanism that worked with various health organisations so that all the countries which signed on to Covax would get enough vaccines for 20 per cent of their populations. For TT that equates to 280,000 doses that would be preferentially given to health care workers, the immunocompromised, and the elderly.

“What it is meant to do is to have equitable access to vaccines for all countries regardless of income status. What they are trying to avoid are for rich countries, especially where the vaccines are manufactured, to hoard the vaccines for their own populations.”

After that first phase, he said Cabinet agreed to buy enough vaccines to cover 33 per cent of the population, about 462,000 people.