By Chantalé Fletcher
THE unvaccinated minor from St George East County who recently tested positive for the Delta variant may have become infected from a gathering.
This was revealed by County Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) for St George East Dr Osafo Fraser who spoke at the Ministry of Health’s virtual presser on Wednesday.
Dr Fraser said, “The Delta case in St George East County was an unvaccinated minor which the investigation showed that the individual most likely became infected through a gathering of friends and neighbours.”
He added that the minor also played and interacted with other minors who were unvaccinated and as well as their parents who subsequently tested positive for Covid-19.
Dr Fraser explained, “Minors are vulnerable and a number of them can’t be vaccinated because of their age and they present a weak point in our defense, which meant that as adults, we have to form a barrier around them so we need to be vaccinated.”
He stated that though young, in some cases minors could become more efficient spreaders of the virus than adults due to play.
Dr Fraser said, “Over the last six weeks, in the St George East County, 90% of those tested positives were unvaccinated. Whereas, we had 49 persons from the community going to hospital for additional care and of those 49 people, 46 were unvaccinated.”
He also said there was large disparity between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, both in those becoming positive and those becoming sick as a result of infections.
Recipe for disaster
Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh said as the Delta variant may spread largely amongst the unvaccinated population, persons may not get treatment.
He said, “The elasticity of the parallel health care system is not as elastic and stretchable as it was two to three months ago. There are physical beds, physical respirators but there are no more people to man those beds.”
Deyalsingh highlighted that the two incidents in Mayaro and St George East which involved large gatherings against the public health regulations.
He made reference to St George East County.
“In that one party, you had webs stretching out to four counties which was over half of the country.”
The minister said this showed how easily in a small mobile country, any gathering could lead to nationwide spread especially with the Delta variant that was more transmissible.
Deyalsingh described the situation as a recipe for disaster.
“It posed a clear and present danger to our health care system.”
Seven-day rolling average increasing
Meanwhile, Principal Medical Officer, Institutions, Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards said there was a slight uptick in the seven-day rolling average which was now above 200.
She raised concerns that the increased number of Covid-19 positive cases would result in adverse events.
Dr Abdool-Richards described severely and critically ill patients as “persons who had a greater risk of being transferred into the High Dependency Unit (HDU) and the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where the risk of them having an adverse event such as long stay, or death increases.”
There are nine hospitals in the parallel health care system to treat with severally and critically ill patients.
She said, “These were the patients who had a greater risk of being transferred into the High Dependency Unit and the Intensive Care Unit, where the risk of them having an adverse event such as long stay or death increases.”
The PMO said, “There were now four times as many severally and critically ill patients in the system as recovering patients. As of today, there was an overall occupancy of 35% in Trinidad and 41% in Tobago.”
Dr Abdool-Richards added that the ICU was now at 88% capacity while the HDU was 29%.
