11 fatalities in 2 days as Trinidad and Tobago records 185 covid deaths

In the last two days, the country has recorded 11 covid19 deaths pushing the toll from the virus to 185 one day after the Prime Minister announced a tightening of restrictions meant to reduce spread of the disease and, hopefully, prevent TT’s parallel health care system from being overwhelmed.

Six coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, fell short of the grim record of seven deaths in one 24-hour period set on September 11, last year.

The day's fatalities also demonstrated alarming trend in which younger people are making up almost half of the covid19 deaths recorded daily by the Ministry of Health.

That trend was pointed out just two days ago by Epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds, during a press conference on Monday.

On Monday, the Ministry of Health reported five new deaths. Four of these patients were elderly males –three with pre-existing conditions – and one younger man without any existing medical issues.

On Tuesday, two of the six killed by covid19 were elderly males with one middle-aged man with pre-existing conditions. Two younger men and one younger woman without significant pre-existing medical conditions were also reported among the dead.

On Monday, Hinds said statistics showed there was a disturbing increase of people in the 25-40 age group testing positive for the virus and dying.

He said, “Among the deaths, we are seeing, in the most recent timeframe, there are two interesting trends. In the first trend, there is a slight increase among women contracting the virus. Before it was 25 per cent it has gone up to 28. The other thing we are seeing is that we are having deaths in a slightly younger age groups under 60, unlike the above 60. This is a cause for concern.”

In that same press conference hosted by Dr Rowley at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, Port of Spain, Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram said the ministry was closely monitoring the pattern to see if the new Brazilian covid19 variant, P1, is linked to the increasing fatality in younger covid19 patients.

He said, “We did see a couple of deaths in younger people in their 30s, a couple in the 40s without comorbidities in the last few days which is a worrying trend and it is a concern whether it can be attributed or not to P1. Only time will tell as we confirm those samples.”

If the rate of spread of covid19 remains high, the ministry predicts that, within ten days, the parallel health care system set up to treat coronavirus victims would be overrun and collapse as a result.

As of Tuesday afternoon, active cases increased to 2,689 with 264 patients in hospital receiving treatment and 2,155 in home quarantine. In total TT has recorded 11,706 covid19 cases since its first case was announced on March 12, 2020.

The ministry said 72 patients have been discharged, taking the total to 8,832. There are 36 patients in step-down facilities waiting to be discharged and 227 people in state quarantine.

The country vaccinated 51,283 people. Of this, 196 people got their second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

A total of 137,081 samples have been sent to the Caribbean Public Health Agency, the Tobago Regional Health Authority, and UWI for testing.