Epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds said elderly care homes and spread in homes are still the main sources of the rise in cases of covid19.
He again called for guardians of people in these homes to give permission for their family members to be vaccinated.
Speaking at the Health Ministry’s virtual media conference on Wednesday, Hinds said the rise in cases was not associated with the vaccine rollout congregation event on June 9, as had been expected.
“There was a steady increase over a period that preceded that lining-up for vaccines for a time period that was actually reasonably short.
"We made a point to look for an increase or bump or spike at the two-week mark after that event, and actually didn’t see one. The possibility is that because it was in limited numbers of places, and the duration was cut short by dispersing the crowds, etc, the event itself may not have had the time to generate the spike we may have been looking for or expecting, if that had gone on for longer or had involved more people.”
He said the spread can be curbed by people continuing to follow the public health regulations and measures, including going to get tested if they are showing symptoms, self-isolating if they are quarantining at home, and not breaching quarantine.
Geographic information systems manager Dr Roshan Seeramsingh said while decreases in the number of cases were being seen in many areas, there were areas which were showing increases.
He said this might be because of spread in care homes.
Hinds confirmed that the youngest person to die from covid19 thus far was a 15-year-old girl. He said the age range of those who had died was 15-99
There will continue to be deaths even with low daily numbers, he said, because there are over 6,000 active cases and some proportion of these would end up being fatal.
He said people entering the country who had received two shots of a vaccine but had not had 14 days pass since the second shot will be treated as not fully vaccinated and would be required to quarantine for 14 days.
He reminded the public that the quarantine protocols could be found on the Health Ministry’s website.
Hinds said while the circulation of the Delta and Lambda variants were concerning, with borders reopening, the measures put in place, including the requirement of a negative PCR test before entry, should reduce the risk of the variants entering Trinidad and Tobago.
“We are also aiming to ramp up the capacity of our testing facilities to be able to detect these variants.”
He said the government would not be mixing vaccines, as is being done by other countries, that is, giving a first dose of one vaccine and the second dose of another.
“The only mixing we would do is the mixture approved by the World Health Organization, and we don’t have the vaccines approved for that particular mix here in TT.”
Hinds said the main determinant of vaccine rollout was the availability of vaccines. When more vaccines become available, he said, the ministry would be able to target more people, especially those o
