(Trinidad Guardian) T&T has lost 1,600 people to COVID-19 since the pandemic in March 2020.
Since the start of 2021, the country has recorded 1,473 COVID-19 deaths, four times as high as the nation’s murder toll.
In its daily update yesterday, the Ministry of Health said a middle-aged woman without any underlying health conditions was among seven people who lost their battle with COVID-19 between Saturday night and yesterday.
The ministry said the other fatalities were four elderly men, a middle-aged man, and another middle-aged woman.
This deadly disease has now taken the lives of one in every 900 people in T&T. As the country enters a new phase of the pandemic with the spread of the Delta COVID-19 variant of concern, cases remain high, crossing 54,000 laboratory-confirmed instances of the disease. To date, one in every 26 people in the country has been confirmed to have had COVID.
As the pandemic rages on, no one has been spared from infection. Months-old infants to near-centenarians continue to contract COVID-19.
However, when it came to succumbing to the disease, the elderly and those with comorbidities have been disproportionately affected.
With just 16.7 per cent of total COVID-19 cases, the elderly (those above age 60) have accounted for 65.5 per cent of T&T’s COVID-19 deaths to date.
Adults aged 25 to 49 accounted for the lion’s share of COVID cases in the country based on data presented on last Friday with 51 per cent of the nation’s 54,114 cases.
While there have been smaller outbreaks in elder-care homes earlier this year, health officials have routinely noted that those in the age 25-49 bracket have become infected and take the virus home to those who are at the highest risk.
Recent deaths trend younger
The latest data for October 2021 has had a concerning trend. Since October 1, the country has lost 118 people to COVID-19, but the proportion of elderly to non-elderly people has noticeably changed.
Instead of the near-two-third proportion of elderly deaths to non-elderly deaths the country has observed pandemic to date, that gap has closed, and at times, it has been nearly evenly split.
Month-to-date, the country has lost 65 older adults versus 52 middle-aged, young adults, including a teenager, while one person’s age and co-morbid status was undisclosed. In fact, on October 7, 2021, T&T recorded its youngest victim to COVID-19, a teenage female with comorbidities aged between 10 and 14.
No further details have been provided by the Ministry of Health, upholding their policy on patient confidentiality.