Tobago's covid19 cases have been climbing for the last few weeks despite stringent public health regulations and a state of emergency.
Last Thursday, Tobago registered 52 new cases – the largest daily tally since the pandemic hit.
As of Tuesday, there were 357 active covid19 cases on the island – 37 patients in state isolation, 316 in home isolation and four in ICU.
The Division of Health, Wellness and Family Development reported two new deaths – a 62-year-old woman with no comorbidities and a man, 81, with comorbidities.
The fatalities took Tobago's covid19 death total to 39.
Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) deputy leader Dr Faith BYisrael has been expressing grave concern about the rise in cases, noting there was a leadership crisis in the health sector.
She believes asymptomatic patients in home isolation are not being monitored as stringently as required.
Secretary of Health Tracy Davidson-Celestine announced the policy to allow conditional home isolation on June 4. On that day the division said there were 200 active cases on the island.
BYisrael, the electoral representative for Goodwood/ Belle Garden, believes health workers are under too much strain to properly monitor what is happening and patients could be flouting health protocol undetected.
“Additional human resources need to be identified, employees and/or volunteers, to provide better monitoring of patients in home isolation. These can be used to answer the hotline number, contact- trace, and monitor people in home quarantine and isolation," she said.
Although questioning the level of oversight of home isolation patients, BYisrael believes it is the best option.
“This is given that we simply don't have space to continually house large volumes of people who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, but the monitoring needs to be beefed up.”
She also advised the division to provide each home with one oximeter (a device that measures the blood oxygen level).
She believes sample collection for covid19 testing should be mobile.
"Asking primary contacts to come to the facilities to be tested isn’t the best policy."
BYisrael also was not impressed with the speed of covid19 testing.
“We are not picking up and separating positive cases soon enough."
She also said the "delta variant – which is more transmissible – is here.”
Hours after she spoke to Newsday, the division confirmed that the contagious Brazil variant was in Tobago.
Announcing the home isolation police last month. Davidson-Celestine said, "We have revisited the policy to only host those at our facilities of care who are easily considered to be persons at risk at this time: those with comorbidities, those who are over the age of 60, those who are not feeling well and those who might not have the required facilities to isolate effectively.”
At that time, she said the public health team would provide day-to-day monitoring of patients in self-quarantine
