Dr Erica Wheeler, Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) TT country representative, says the country should start seeing an increase in the number of covid19 cases around this time, about two weeks after Carnival, but the more important set of numbers was that of hospitalisations.
“What may be unavoidable is an increase in cases, but hospitalisations are important to note. That is what is going to tell you how widespread it (covid19) is.
"Because remember, large numbers of people are no longer going to health centres to test. They are doing home testing, so nothing is officially recorded.”
She said the number of cases would increase because the various large gatherings throughout the Carnival season would cause the virus to continue to circulate. And TT has already had cases of the most recent omicron variant, XBB.1.5, which spread very rapidly.
She stressed that the situation would not be as bad as with the delta variant, because, while omicron was more contagious, it was less deadly. She said that was normal because all viruses had to infect their hosts to survive, and if they killed off the population, they would die as well.
In addition, she said, other than home testing with antigen tests, the increase may not be “huge” for several reasons, including the fact that parties were taking place before Carnival.
With Carnival being celebrated on February 20 and 21, TT saw a spike in cases from February 22-28. New cases were at 559, whereas the week before there were 226. Hospitalisations also increased from 39 to 53 and deaths from three to eight. Numbers for the following week, March 1-7, also jumped, with new cases increasing to 622 and hospitalisations to 75. Deaths remained at eight.
Wheeler said a factor in how high the hospitalisation numbers would get was the balance between natural and vaccine immunity, and whether those who were not immunised had underlying illnesses.
“We have a complicated picture in TT, because so many people have not come forward to be immunised – only 51.3 per cent of people have actually been fully immunised – and on top of that, we have home testing.
"The third thing is, we have co-circulating viruses. We have people coming in from North America with the influenza virus that may be slightly different, because flu viruses change every year. There’s RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) circulating in North America, that we have here, and there’s covid.
"How do you know which of those you have unless you get tested?
"And it is possible to have multiple viruses at once.”
She said with the antigen or rapid test, even if someone had covid19, if their viral load was not very high in the first few days of infection, the test may give a negative result. If still sick after a few days, they are supposed to test again but most do not, so they would not know they had covid19. Then, some people are asymptomatic. So there was more covid19 circulating than was officially recorded.
Wheeler noted that vaccinated individuals could get reinfected b
