Health Ministry preparing for natural disaster management during covid19

The Ministry of Health’s chief technical co-ordinator of disaster preparedness, Patti-Ann Williams, said TT faces several potential challenges with the impending rainy and hurricane season during the covid19 pandemic.

She said the hurricane season is forecast to have eight hurricanes, with four of these being Category Three or higher.

Williams said there are four major challenges which would be faced by the healthcare system in the event of a very heavy rainfall event or natural disaster while the country is also dealing with covid19.

She said one challenge was the potential for a limited availability of response personnel, while another was the potential for difficulty in separating elderly and immunocompromised individuals from the rest of the population if evacuations are carried out.

Williams said another challenge would be the availability of personnel protective equipment, given the disruption of global supply chains. She said health care capacity, including bed capacity, would be strained if there was a major disaster.

Williams said all health and non-health stakeholders would have to collaborate in order to manage such an event. She said some measures which would need to be put in place would be resource allocation and re-allocation, training and retraining, facility preparation, evacuation and shelter management and public education and risk communication. She said county medical officers were working within their areas of operation to put measures in place to deal with these issues.

She said some of the measures put into place to manage covid19, including regular updates to the public, if continued, could assist in helping to manage the upcoming hurricane season.