By Sue-Ann Wayow
UNLESS a behavioural change occurs by the population of Tobago, the number of Covid-19 cases will continue to increase.
At a virtual media conference on Friday hosted by the Division of Health, Wellness and Family Life, health officials urged citizens to adhere strictly to all health and safety measures put in place.
Covid-19 Response Team Member in the County Medical Office of Health Dr Anthony Thompson said in the past seven days, the island had 58 new cases and three Covid-19 related deaths with an average of nine new positive cases per day and the current number of active cases on Friday was 99.
The age groups contracting the virus were 30 to 39 and 40 to 49 which represented the majority people in the working population, he said.
Dr Thompson said, “It has been a very difficult week for the island and the health service.”
Using graphs to demonstrate his information, he said as at May 18, the rolling seven-day average stood at 77.6% “which is the highest level that we have recorded since the pandemic began.”
Last week, the average was 64.9%.
Dr Thompson added that data from March 15 to date showed that 56.30% of persons getting the virus were male and 43.70% female.
He said, “As the number of cases increase, we expect to get more severe cases and over the last week, we actually experienced more deaths. Please keep in mind that your individual choices have unknown effect on people you may never even meet and if we could manage to just restrict our individual activities, we will actually be saving lives.”
Several measures have been put in place to deal with the rising challenges including additional beds, hospital service adjustments, relief grants and counselling support.
Dr Thompson indicated that the more positive patients there were on the island, the greater the chance of infection and the main task would be to bring the number of Covid-19 positive cases on the island down.
