Health Ministry: No restrictions lifted as covid19 hospital cases drop

Despite reduced hospitalisation of covid19 patients and fewer deaths, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh says the country is not out of the woods yet and restrictions will remain in place for now.

Speaking at the Health Ministry’s bi-weekly covid19 update on Wednesday, Principal Medical Officer Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards said there has been a gradual and consistent decline in the occupancy of the parallel health care system.

“Over the last 13 days we have noted and confirmed that the occupancy is now under 40 per cent. The overall occupancy over three levels of health care is 30 per cent.

"This is the lowest occupancy in the parallel health care system since early April last year.”

She added that the total number of patients in the system as at 8 am on Wednesday was 270, with 225 in various levels from warded to intensive care unit, and 45 in stepdown facilities.

Asked if the considerable drop in hospitalised patients meant a possible roll-back of restrictions, Deyalsingh said the virus is not yet behind Trinidad and Tobago.

“We are always looking at the number to see how things can be eased up. No date as yet, as those decision are made by the Prime Minister. We continue to watch the figures, and it is encouraging – but don’t think that the virus is in the rear-view mirror and you have passed it down the road. This virus is still around us. Let’s still get vaccinated and adhere to the public health regulations.”

Deyalsingh said currently there is no such time frame for lifting restrictions,

“Right now. the metrics are good, the metrics are encouraging. but as the policy-maker, I have to have in the back of my mind that things can go upside down with a new variant or an outbreak in a very short space of time.”

He said as a result he always had to facilitate room for that possibly happening, adding that it is impossible for anyone to give a date for rolling back of restrictions as long as TT is in a pandemic.

Richards said the reason for the reduction in hospitalisations was that the delta variant was a clinically severe variant while omicron is clinically less severe at this time.

Deyalsingh said both Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram and epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds said omicron is now the dominant strain, and over 50 per cent of the samples taken in the past two weeks were omicron.

Richards, asked the reason for the reduction in hospital cases, said: “We now have a population that is 50.2 per cent fully vaccinated so there is a level of immunity. We continue to do an increased number of testing, so we identify cases earlier on so persons can access earlier treatment.”

She added that there has been a shift in health-seeking behaviour, with covid19-positive patients asking for medical attention earlier and with over 100,000 cases to date there is also a high level of natural immunity.

But she said while the numbers are low, the percentage of unvaccinated people requesting hospitalisation remains high: 84 per cent of the patients warded between July and February were unvaccinated.