We’re at the end of this life-changing year at last. No one will forget living through 2020! We enter the New Year with reason for optimism with a number of vaccines having been approved around the world. Big, rich countries have already given first vaccinations to millions of their citizens. As T&T has signed up with the COVAX collaboration which grants us access to subsidised-priced approved vaccines, we hope to start our vaccination process by the end of March 2021.
Since my last post on Coronavirus 7 weeks ago, we have recorded 1,228 new cases and 16 deaths. This brings the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to 7,158 and deaths to 127 for the whole of the year 2020. If you exclude the spikes of cases in the prisons and the recent COVID-19 outbreak on an oil platform, we have been recording single-digit figures of new daily cases for some time now. This at a time when the health systems in the USA, UK and many other countries in the world are being overwhelmed by this virus. Many people in these countries had to spend Christmas all alone due to extreme lockdown measures. Many others had to mourn loved ones.
Trinidad & Tobago has done very well in tackling the pandemic. I believe that the rapid and strict closure of our borders in March 2020 and later on, the mandating of masks once in public, and also the application of hand-washing/sanitising habits before entering business premises, has saved our citizens. Our government set up an innovative parallel health system just to focus on COVID-19 patients and the quarantining of travellers, etc. About 10% of our cases stem from returning nationals under quarantine. This not only saved many lives but also prevented our normal health system from becoming strained by the Coronavirus.
Our biggest health risk is the constant influx of Venezuelan refugees. Sadly, that issue came to the fore recently when a boatload overturned and over 30 people died. That caused the Venezuelan and T&T governments to discuss measures on how to prevent these overloaded boats from heading to our shores. Of course, there was an international outcry as these immigrants were desperately seeking a better life. But we have a number of our own citizens still locked out of our borders and stuck in cold countries in dire circumstances financially. It’s a difficult situation to manage fairly and humanely.
I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2021. I hope there is no “dangerous” partying for Old Year’s in these COVID times, as is our culture. May the vaccine come soon!
