PORT OF SPAIN — A dubious distinction at best, but it is worth noting that Trinidad and Tobago has climbed three spots upward in the COVID-19 world per capita death rankings.
The Caribbean twin-island country off the coast of South America is now 26th in the world for coronavirus deaths, according to Wikipedia. Trinidad was formerly No. 29 in the world.
Peru in South America is the worst country for COVID-19 deaths, standing easily at No. 1 and followed in the region by Brazil at No. 15. The United States of America is No. 18.
Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday recorded six deaths from COVID-19, one of the lowest numbers recorded since TT entered its third wave of the pandemic in August 2021. Unfortunately, this brought the number of deaths since the beginning of the pandemic to 3,501.
The number of cases reported from samples collected from Saturday to Wednesday was 738. The number of active cases is now 21,045.
The Health Ministry’s COVID-19 update said the people who died were one elderly man, two elderly women, two middle-aged men and one middle-aged woman. It said two of these people had multiple comorbidities, including a mix of diabetes, hypertension, a history of strokes, liver disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. Three people each had only one comorbidity, and one person had no known medical condition.
There are 360 patients in hospital. Of these, there are 83 people at the Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility, with 15 in the intensive care unit and 13 in the high dependency unit. There are 36 people at the Caura Hospital, 53 at the Augustus Long Hospital, 44 at the St Ann’s Hospital, 59 at the Arima General Hospital, 33 at the new Point Fortin Hospital, 37 at the St James Medical Complex, 15 at the Scarborough Regional Hospital, Fort King George and none at the Scarborough Regional Hospital, Signal Hill.
There are 79 patients in step-down facilities, with none at the Claxton Bay Correctional Facility, 17 at UWI Debe, six at UTT Valsayn, 32 at the Point Fortin Area Hospital, 16 at the Port of Spain field hospital, none at the Couva Field Hospital, eight at the Tacarigua Facility, and none in Tobago.
There are 41 people in state quarantine facilities, and 19,868 people in home self-isolation. There are 647 recovered community cases and 35 people have been discharged from public health facilities.
The ministry said that 83.8 per cent or 12,550 of 14,977 patients in the parallel healthcare system were unvaccinated, based on data from July 22 to January 26.
It said of the 3,358 deaths to date, 224 were vaccinated, 2,887 were unvaccinated, and 390 had died before the first cohort of vaccinated people became fully vaccinated on May 24, 2021.
There are 696,708 people who have been fully vaccinated out of a total of 1.4 million people, while 703,292 people have received either a first dose or no dose of a vaccine. The update said 49.8 per cent of the total population had been vaccinated.
The update said the total number of people vaccinated with their first dose of a two-dose regime was 683,181.
The number of people vaccinated with their second dose was 642,640, while the number of people vaccinated with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 54,068.
A total of 118,727 people have received an additional primary dose or a booster dose.
The number of people tested in both public and private facilities is 591,666, of which 265,203 were done at private facilities and 326,463 were done at public facilities.
Sometime in the next few weeks, the official death toll for the two-year COVID pandemic in the U.S. will reach one million. Despite being the wealthiest nation on the planet, the U.S. has continued to have the most COVID infections and deaths per country, by far, and it has the highest per capita death rate of any wealthy nation.
This is an unfathomable number of people dead, yet, mass media are downplaying it. This is despite an empathetic New York Times headline in May 2020 of “U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, an Incalculable Loss,” and using its entire front page to print names of some of the deceased. As Luppe B. Luppen noted on Twitter, the newspaper’s more recent headline was the cruel and callous “900,000 Dead, but Many Americans Move On.”