The Prime Minister said there are no plans to disrupt Carnival celebrations with new restrictions, even though covid19 cases are projected to be in the hundreds in a few weeks, given current trends. He urged people to take personal responsibility for their health during the period, including getting vaccinated.
Speaking at a media conference at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, Port of Spain, on Thursday, the Prime Minister said the country had been approaching a level of normality after almost three years of being in the pandemic. He said while there has been an uptick in cases, the situation does not yet warrant an intervention outside the basic precautions of wearing masks, washing hands, and watching distances.
“We are not approaching this phase of our existence by trying to shut out the virus, as we have all the variants of concern present. Closing the border is not a necessary response at this time.
"Our response has to be to suppress the spread of what we have among us. Half of our population was vaccinated, while a large part of the unvaccinated population got immunity by catching the virus. We’re not in the same position as previously.
“Now in Trinidad and Tobago we’ve gone through Christmas and we are going into a Carnival, where the nature of Carnival is meeting and mixing. We do not believe the situation warrants us to not have Carnival, but we believe it warrants us taking personal decisions about your exposure, to minimise instances of requirement for health-care delivery to you.
“Many people have and would get infected going forward and not need health care, and these are the largest percentage of the population. But there is that smaller population to whom the virus is a very dangerous threat.
"We’re not disrupting the economy, we’re not disrupting the border, we are living with covid19.”
Epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds said there has been an upward trend in the number of covid19 cases as well as the percentage positivity of patients tested.
[caption id="attachment_995569" align="alignnone" width="1024"] From left: Dr Michelle Trotman, CMO Roshan Parasram, Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards, Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh, Prof Christine Carrington and epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds chat after the Prime Minister’s media briefing on covid19 at the Diplomatic Centre, Port of Spain, on Thursday. Photo by Angelo Marcelle[/caption]
“From the week that ended on Christmas Eve to the week that ended on New Year’s Eve, there was a 38.8 per cent increase in the weekly totals, and the following week was 65.7 per cent higher than that. So we are seeing an uptick in the speed at which the weekly totals are increasing. We know that it is driven to some extent by all the gathering and mingling we would have done, and we note it will be driven further by the gathering and mingling we plan to do. So we need to put out cautionary advice to bear in mind the potential for spread.”
He said the projections show a fairly rapid increase in the expected number of cases per day.
“It was 58 at the last update.
