By Chantalé Fletcher
ONE of the latest three cases of the Delta variant in Trinidad and Tobago is an unvaccinated minor.
On Sunday, the Ministry of Health recorded three new cases of the variant which included an unvaccinated adult and minor without a recent travel history and a non-national from Venezuela. To date, there have been ten cases with this highly transmissible variant found in T&T.
Speaking at the Ministry of Health’s virtual presser on Monday, Chief Executive Officer Dr Roshan Parasram said, “As of September 14, 2021, the Delta variant was reported in 180 countries and now reported in all six World Health Organization (WHO) regions such as the America, Europe, South East Asia, Eastern Mediterranean, Western Pacific and Africa.”
He said the Delta variant was first documented from samples in India in October 2020.
However, the variant later became a WHO designated Variant of Interest in April 4, 2021 and later a Variant of Concern in May 11, of the same year.
Implications
The CMO explained that the Delta variant had an increased transmissibility and secondary attack rate.
He said, “It was at least two times more transmissible as the Alpha variant, which was also known as the UK variant, but was also two times more transmissible than the original Wuhan strain.”
Dr Parasram said the Delta has an increased infectiousness in the early stages of infection, an increase in hospitalisation and faster replication.
He said, “If you have increased viral loads in the early stage, it means people are in the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic phase therefore, if you have a higher viral load at that time, it lends itself to increase in transmission.”
Dr Parasram said, “The Delta was dominant in many Countries such as United States, United Kingdom, Barbados, Denmark and the majority of the European Region.”
The CMO added, “All WHO-approved Covid-19 vaccines have demonstrated to be safe and effective, including against this variant.”
He said, “It is imperative that we get our vaccination rate as high as we can to prevent the spread of Delta.”
Should we not be changing the entry protocol to indicate that anyone coming from a location where Delta and other highly transmissible variants are present that the person should be tested for variants immediately and quarantined for a week? This should apply to vaccinated and unvaccinated, nationals and non-nationals. I think it’s naive to think that a fully vaccinated national is good to go regardless of their travel history. Delta entered the community somehow so it had to be brought in legally or illegally.