While there has been heated banter in Parliament over the report of the committee appointed to investigate the factors contributing to clinical outcomes of covid19 patients, the conversation about what's being done about it and when has been frosty.

The five-member committee appointed to hold the investigation had a six-point scope of inquiry.

The report was expected to identify the profile of patients who died of covid19 by comorbidities, ethnicity, age and gender, review the definition of covid19 death for consistency with WHO guidelines while recommending an appropriate methodology for TT and examine how patients were being admitted, discharged and transferred to determine if this had an impact on clinical outcomes.

The committee was also asked to determine treatment and management protocols, including staffing, medicine availability, technical capacity, PPE and other support systems, review the standard of care and its uniformity and consistency for patients and also investigate other factors affecting clinical outcomes.

It's no surprise that the committee asked for an extension on the week it was given.

The committee led by UWI's Prof Terence Seemungal, first met on January 17 and delivered its report on February 14, collecting data over three weeks, then producing what it described cautiously as a "rapid assessment."

What the public knows of this report is what has been conveyed by government minister Stuart Young in a statement to Parliament that was heavily prefaced by a pro-government framing of his excerpts from the report.

The public would have been better served by less government PR in Mr Young's statement and more independent committee findings, but even this limited glimpse into a 105-page report raised issues that demand immediate, clearly defined responses.

It is no surprise to hear that medical teams have been overworked in the parallel healthcare system, but the consequences of understaffing among nurses and orderlies, spreading too few medical professionals among many patients, aggravated difficult circumstances. The ratios are alarming. One ICU nurse to six patients requiring intensive care. One nurse on the wards tending to between 20 and 30 patients. There were shortages of critical-case management medications and supplies to do potentially life-saving tracheotomies.

The young doctors and nurses who got their baptism of fire serving on covid19 wards should be first in line to manage the suggested non-communicable-disease-response teams now demanded by the extensive comorbidities revealed by the pandemic.

This is not a report for the shelf of abandoned inquiries.

The findings of the Seemungal committee are the business of every resident of TT and must be made available for public information, comment and informed public and civil-society review.

The government has long insisted that we are all in this together, and a report that defines our mutual circumstances is everyone's business.