At the moment, county Victoria has the highest rate of active covid19 cases in the country with 22.9 per cent.

Pointe-a-Pierre, Naparima, Savanna Grande, Ortoire and Moruga are among the districts in the county.

Speaking at the covid19 virtual press conference on Saturday, chief medical officer Dr Roshan Parasram said after Victoria, St George Central had the second highest number of cases in the community, not in hospitals, at 11.9 per cent.

Caroni had 18.5 per cent; St Patrick, 12.3; St George West, 9.1; Tobago, 8.7; St David / St Andrews, 6.7; St George East, 6.2; and Nariva/Mayaro, 3.8.

In home isolation, 33.3 per cent of people were asymptomatic, 9.9 per cent had recovered, 1.9 per cent were transferred to hospital, and 55 per cent were symptomatic.

The percentage of those with comorbidities was 56.6 and those without were 43.4. The most frequent comorbidities were hypertension at 37.1 per cent, diabetes at 30.3, asthma at 16, heart disease at 3.1, and pulmonary issues and immune deficiencies were both 0.5.

The 40-59 age group was most affected at 29.06 per cent, 20.81 per cent of those affected were ages 60-79, 26.3 per cent were ages 20-39, those 80 and over were 18.19 per cent, and 5.63 per cent were 19 and under.

He said throughout the pandemic the majority of covid19 deaths occurred in the accident and emergency departments of hospitals and on the wards of the parallel health care system. However, recently there was an increase in the number of deaths occurring en route to hospitals and there was a slight increase in deaths at homes.

He asked people to pay attention to symptoms of deterioration and try to get to hospitals as soon as possible.

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh added that the government spent over $500 million in the health response to covid19 including infrastructure, hiring personnel, as well as pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical consumables.

Theses include test kits of which TT has “more than enough” of all types. He said TT had three months stock of BGI test kits out of China and 100,000 on its way. There were also the 10,000 GeneXpert test kits which arrived on December 3, and 57,000 Abbott test kits were expected to arrive this month.

“We put in rolling orders based on, not only current usage, but we try to predict usage based on the seven-day rolling average. And we always tend to bump up our requirements for test kits.”

Speaking to disruptions in the regular health care system, Deyalsingh said whether or not an elective procedure was carried out would be determined on a case-by-case basis.

“We started back our elective programme. The hospitals under the director of health of the individual hospitals will make that determination as to which elective procedures can be started back. Emergency procedures or emergency surgeries, midwifery, maternal care – they have never been disrupted.”

Asked about how the ministry was working to combat vaccine hesitancy, he said the ministry and the Ministry of Communications were working on “something” for next year.