Lockdown akin to not facing facts

THE EDITOR: Here we go again. My last letter ended with the statement, “Locking down the population is akin to not facing the facts.” Wednesday’s announcement that the Government was reinstituting earlier lockdown measures – beaches closed, gatherings of no more than five people, in-house dining suspended and so on – is just another example of the Ministry of Health continuing its refusal to face the facts. As will unfurl shortly.

On All Fool’s Day people tuned to i95FM would have heard the Prime Minister during an unscheduled interview, ostensibly aimed at dispelling rumours of a pending lockdown lasting three weeks, respond to a query re the flow of illegal Venezuelan immigrants across TT’s borders as follow:

“We would not want to identify at the personal level in that way. But clearly all of these are exposures which in themselves contribute negatively to the battle that we are fighting. If illegal immigrants are coming in as they certainly keep trying to do, and they come from an area where the virus is present, they could easily bring it to us. We knew that all along, that is why we have been keeping our borders heavily patrolled.

“Of course once they are in the population they become another human contact with the virus, whether illegal or legal. And because we are out and about trying to be as normal as we could, sometimes an infected person may be at a supermarket or a mall.

“So we shouldn’t panic at these things. What we do is when we identify the situation, we do aggressive contact tracing and the protocols that follow from there give us the best chance to contain it because basically what we are doing all around is managing risk” (Daily Express, April 2).

What I heard and experienced from the foregoing was the leader of the Government, the ultimate arbiter in the constant struggle all leaders face in the pandemic – lives versus livelihoods – delivering in dispassionate fashion his comprehensive understanding of how we arrived at what he described as a “dangerous crossroad,” what may have triggered the re-entry of covid19, its evolution once the beachheads were breached and, most importantly, the immediate way forward – aggressive contact tracing and application of the protocols aimed at containing spread.

I heard a leader, who in earlier forums had outlined the catastrophe associated with having to impose another lockdown, composed and in control, hoping that his “no-panic” attitude would translate to his audience, saying literally we have been there before, know what is required, and this is the plan. What happened?

The plan appeared to be working. Newly confirmed cases that started a slow but steady rise in the third week in March took a sharp turn upwards, doubling from the 20s to the 40s in the first week of April, prompting the PM to an unscheduled address to the nation urging calm. Of note was the fact that hospitalisations at the Scarborough Hospital went from four on Holy Thursday to 13 on Easter Sunday; people with comorbidities were being placed in the hospital so that they could be more closely monitored. What that means to the astute observer was aggressive contact tracing as prescribed by the PM was underway. Hospitalisation up to that point was mainly driven by events in Tobago.

Although viral activity and corresponding actions continue to be played out in Tobago, the goings-on (aggressive contact tracing and hospitalisation) have largely switched to Trinidad. Hospitalisation at the Couva Hospital that was 12 on Glorious Saturday (April 3) but has risen to 54 at the time of writing, an indication that aggressive contact tracing has continued in Trinidad.

But no one should be surprised or panicked at the overall rise of newly confirmed cases. I would stress that the rise is not from people walking into clinics with symptoms suggestive of a viral syndrome and testing positive. No, aggressive contact tracing is revealing a household-to-household spread as experienced in Barbados in its post-Christmas covid19 debacle.

The plan outlined by the PM to contain such spread is working, and we should stick to it. Locking down the population as described earlier is not going to change anything.

I understand how Cabinet works. The PM is up against a Ministry of Health with a mindset that “illegal gathering” explains everything, so stop contact sports, close the beaches, stop indoor dining, and on and on. It is strange that the Minister of Health made the lockdown announcement. We have grown accustomed to the PM making these types of announcements. Having just come through his own personal Armageddon with covid19, he simply was not in a good spot to have his will.

The lockdown is not going to impact the trajectory of the spread, but will inflict what could very well be “mortal” blows on large segments of the population already weakened by very questionable past shutdowns. Up to last weekend the Minister of Health went on live TV making statements like what is being witnessed now was the tail end of the surge attendant on the easing of restraint on contact sports, and that the surge associated with the Tobago sojourn would start in two weeks. As stated above, that latter situation was already taking effect on Holy Thursday.

Those most recent gaffes are enough for people to know that they must place greater faith and trust in the words of the PM on April 1.

KENWYN NICHOLLS

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