CMO Dr Roshan Parasram said there are 212 patients in accident and emergency departments awaiting transfer to the parallel healthcare system. Describing this as alarming, he said this is the highest number that has been seen for any period since the beginning of the pandemic.
Speaking at the Health Ministry’s virtual media conference on Wednesday, Parasram said the system is full almost to capacity and this will be exacerbated if the omicron variant becomes widespread, as it has in other countries.
“It is a matter of time before it is detected in the majority of the world.
"We are looking at an R-0 in excess of 15, where one infected person can infect up to 15 other people, which means it will spread very quickly. There will be a large surge very quickly and the impact on the health system cannot be mitigated unless the case numbers go down.
"We can control it if we take all the precautions, but the rate of spread is very alarming to all of us, on top of what we’re seeing with delta.”
The cases in the A&Es are in addition to the 675 people in hospitals and step-down facilities.
“Expansion of a system by creating beds is one thing, but we have a finite resource in terms of human resources that cannot spread very much further. We continue to do our best to expand the ICU capacity, but in the last couple of weeks, the expansion has been smaller in terms of the number of beds we have been able to add. But we will continue to do so as best we can.
"We need to focus on getting the numbers down as a country. Vaccination needs to go up quickly as well, as 89 per cent of people in the system are unvaccinated.”
Parasram said the omicron variant is spreading faster worldwide than any previous variant, with the number of cases doubling within two-three days. If it begins to spread in TT, he predicted a large surge in cases, with an increase in hospitalisations, on top of the increased numbers of severe cases already being reported by the regional health authorities (RHAs).
He said there would be no way to mitigate against it, especially as healthcare workers are burnt out and the parallel healthcare system is almost full.
Parasram said in the UK, 4,713 cases had been detected up to Monday, and the UK Health Security Agency estimated that omicron would become the dominant strain by mid-December if trends continued.
He said in South Africa, there were 2,828 cases on November 26, 4,373 on November 30, 19,842 on December 8, and 37,875 on December 12. He said the delta variant dominated in all provinces until the end of October 2021, and omicron dominated the sequencing in samples submitted from November onward.
Parasram said the virus had been found in 77 countries as of Tuesday and it was concerning that people were dismissing the variant as being mild.
“Even if omicron causes less severe disease, which is still to be determined, the large number of cases can soon overwhelm health care systems."
He also warned preliminary data suggests "a possible reduction in vaccine efficacy and effectiveness a
