(Trinidad Guardian) The “Mother of all Carnivals” is on and the Government does not intend to institute any additional restrictions despite rising COVID-19 cases.
This was the word from Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley yesterday, although he still called for greater responsibility among the population with the new XBB.1.5 sub-variant in circulation and daily cases forecasted to reach the “high hundreds” within the next two weeks on the current trajectory.
Speaking during a media conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s, the Prime Minister justified the decision to continue with the Carnival plan despite the rising infections.
“We do not believe the situation warrants us to not have Carnival but we believe that it warrants us taking personal decisions about your exposure to minimise instances for requirement of healthcare delivery to you,” he said.
This, he said, meant increased vigilance and adherence to practices that are now well known to everyone—observing the public health protocols and getting vaccinated and boosted. This is especially critical for those with comorbidities, he said.
Laying the foundation for their decision to continue with the festivities, the PM said, is the comparatively milder virility of currently circulating variants whose threats are further undercut by a higher level of immunity among the population.
“As of now, given the nature of the population, given the immune response that we’ve had, given the suppressing effect of the vaccine programme and the natural immunity that we have built up, we are now facing a situation where we can continue to operate without the level of fear and distancing that we did before, which caused us to close our border, shut down our schools and so on. Those things are not necessary at this time,” Dr Rowley said.
Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh also said the ministry conducted a seroprevalence study last year to determine the level of immunity among the population and it returned favourable results. He said 961 samples were selected from both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, with 949 being of use.
Of these samples, he said just 50 did not have detectable levels of antibodies against COVID-19. He said this meant 94.73 per cent of the samples had antibodies present through both vaccination and naturally acquired through infection.
“This is again scientific evidence, quantitative evidence that there is a high level of immunity in the public,” Deyalsingh said.
“So, when we say we are comfortable with the level of immunity, this is the evidence that we rely on.”
