HEALTH Minister Terrence Deyalsingh says he is glad that a University of Oxford report has ranked Trinidad and Tobago second in preparedness to lift its lockdown measures in place to stop the spread of Covid-19.
Speaking at the virtual news conference on Wednesday, Deyalsingh said, “I am glad that the University Oxford put out this.
“There has been so much misinformation about testing, why we isolated and so on.”
The Oxford research note, dated April 23, 2020, used four out of six measures recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for relaxing physical distancing.
The four are:
- Transmission control;
- Testing, tracing and isolation policies;
- Managing of risk of exporting and importing cases; and
- Community engagement
The two actions not measured are high vulnerability setting and preventative measures established in workplaces.
Deyalsingh cautioned against the public about being “lulled into a false sense of security” because of the report.
He called on the country to continue to be vigilant.
The report noted: “From this information, we construct a ‘Lockdown rollback table,’ defined below, which roughly describes how close countries are to achieving four of the six current WHO recommendations.
“Because the data only measure four of six recommended actions, we should be cautious about inferring what countries are ready to rollback lockdown from this measure. Indeed, the data provides a better indication of what countries are not ready.
In the list Vietnam is first with Costa Rica followed by South Korea and Belize. Barbados is ranked at number ten.
At the bottom is Iran with Mauritania in the penultimate position as Palestine and the United Kingdom are ranked three and four places from the bottom respectively.
The research note titled Lockdown rollback checklist: Do countries meet WHO recommendations for rolling back lockdown? can be downloaded below:
2020-04-lockdown-rollback-checklist-research-note
