Third surge of covid19 in TT
THE EDITOR: There is no single reason for another surge of covid19 cases in TT. For example, more testing can reveal more cases. Also, local outbreaks are big enough to push district tallies higher. But experts think most of the recent surges are due to the rolling back of the lockdown by lifting stay-at-home orders, school and business closures, and other restrictions that were put in place to stem the virus’s spread.
Much like the increase seen shortly after the general election in August due to the congregating, there is now a significant increase in cases after much congregating over the Easter vacation. This would represent our third significant surge since the pandemic reached TT.
Authorities have since rolled forward the lockdown, yet we are still seeing daily rises in the number of new cases. This is because of delays in picking up the newly infected as there is a latent period of a few weeks before symptoms present, as well as the delay between a swab test and reporting time. Thus, these new cases may have been contracted about two weeks prior.
We may not necessarily see the effect in the drop of cases we want to see as a result of the lockdown until weeks after, provided that this measure is working like it did post-election 2020.
It seems that just as we see a glimmer of hope of things returning to normal, things just revert back to the worst times of this pandemic. But we must remember that rolling back or forward the lockdown will continue to be a dynamic process until we achieve the target herd immunity either by vaccination or by, unfortunately, becoming infected.
There is no doubt that such measures hinder activity necessary for economic growth. As long as this pandemic continues to surge, the negative economic effect would most certainty be crippling in the long term.
Thus far we have seen signs of economic shrinkage as well as a negative effect on achieving learning goals for children because of the new format of schooling. This is nothing new as the last five major pandemics that have affected humans in the last hundred years had the same negative consequences.
As this pandemic continues we will have to continue striking a balance between the possible large morbidity and mortality of covid19 and how much economic decline we can withstand.
DR VISHAM BHIMULL
primary care physician
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