(Trinidad Guardian) On Thursday, Trinidad and Tobago took the grim title of recording the highest daily confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people. According to data analysis by Our World In Data, this calculation used data from John Hopkins University CSSE COVID-19 data.
Trinidad and Tobago recorded 31 deaths on Thursday, marking the deadliest day for the pandemic to date. Looking at this data standardized, Trinidad and Tobago recorded 22.09 deaths per million people, surpassing many European countries amid their worst wave of the pandemic.
When looking at cases, the country had the seventh most confirmed COVID-19 infections per million people on Thursday in the entire world, with mainly European countries eclipsing Trinidad and Tobago’s 444.64. Our Caribbean neighbour, Dominica, takes the top spot, with a whopping 2,452.47 COVID-19 cases per million people. It is important to note that these figures change daily. In addition, due to limited testing and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death, confirmed deaths can be lower than the actual number of deaths in many countries. Similarly, limited testing also results in the number of confirmed cases being lower than the true number of infectious.
However, even with these grim figures and titles, the country’s case-fatality ratio (CFR), or how many COVID-19 cases succumb to the disease, is the 34th worst globally, at 2.99 percent. In the Caribbean, only Grenada surpasses T&T’s figure.
To date, Trinidad and Tobago has lost 2040 people to COVID-19 as of November 25th. Approximately one in 700 people in the country have succumbed to the disease since March 2020. With 344 COVID-19 deaths for November, the month is already the second deadliest month for the pandemic to date. The deadliest month for the pandemic in the country to date remains June 2021, with 352 deaths.