We are now completely locked down in T&T. Not even allowed to exercise outdoors. A State of Emergency was announced on Monday with a curfew imposed between 9pm and 5am. Immediately, about a quarter of our population requested an exemption for travelling within curfew hours. Our Chief of Police, Gary Griffith, just shook his head and only granted 10,000 exemptions.
The Health Service quickly added over 200 beds to our parallel health system to treat with sick COVID-19 patients, but these are being rapidly used up. Less sick persons are asked to quarantine at home. The US government donated two 40-bed field hospitals to cope with the overload of cases. The faces giving us the bad news on the Ministry of Health briefings showed worry and fear for our country. The newspapers presented photos of people congregating and/or not wearing masks properly. This behaviour is liable for big fines, and in fact, many such tickets were issued in the ensuing days. There were also personal stories of life and death with COVID on all media. Somehow, the government has to change their communications strategy to reach people who are not receiving the warnings, or just not taking on the seriousness of our situation.
The good news is that more vaccines have arrived on our shores. The second tranche of 33,600 AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX are here and will be administered as second doses from June. The 100,000 SinoPharm Beijing vaccines are starting to be administered from today. The Minister of Health emphasised that this will be on an appointment basis only. But the ‘vaccine drives’ (as described in my last post) have already started as people travel to remote parts of the country in the hope of getting a ‘walk-in’ shot. This is because it is so difficult to get through with the appointment system. We are also getting AstraZeneca vaccines from other Caribbean islands, mainly because these are expiring soon and those countries are fighting ‘vaccine-hesitancy’.
This must be one of the worst crises to face our country in living memory. We will get through it, but I fear the cost in terms of lives lost, as well as the financial and mental health costs. Please, everyone, stay indoors as much as you can and avoid contact with anyone not from your household. Easy to say as we all make exceptions, don’t we?
