Covid19 alarm bell rings

The sharp rise in covid19 cases has led to the return of restrictions, with effect from Monday.

CMO Dr Roshan Parasram believes there is worse to come after the mingling on the campaign trail leading up to the general election.

UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar called on the population to be “mindful of this very serious public health threat” on her Facebook page and called for “new and urgent contingency measures to protect citizens.”

That warning was couched in partisan disdain for the efforts of the PNM-led Ministry of Health – but the concern is warranted and the advice necessary for everyone.

The total number of people in TT reported to have been infected by the novel coronavirus is now 497, a number now jumping daily by dozens.

The second wave that Dr Parasram has been warning of is upon us.

There are now patients who are not linked to a known cluster and the country has entered an accelerated phase of transmission – community spread.

Deaths attributed to covid19 increased by 20 per cent after long months stalled at eight fatalities. attributed to our invisible enemy. An elderly man and woman died last week, bringing the death toll to ten.

That should be a wake-up call for everyone in TT to be more diligent in taking preventive measures. At this point the half-hearted efforts at social distancing, wearing masks (often as chinstraps, or dangling from one ear) are even more wildly inappropriate.

On Saturday, the Prime Minister decided not to wait any longer or to give the public the benefit of any doubt about its common sense.

So from Monday, some of the earlier restrictions on public activities and gatherings are to be reinstated. In addition, schools are closed until further notice, a restriction that the PM warned was likely to run to the end of December.

On Monday, he will consider emergency legislation making it mandatory to wear masks.

“The time for suasion is now past,” he warned.

The country reacted swiftly to the first wave of the virus, with the original stay-at-home measures, coupled with the closure of TT’s borders. Those moves were so successful in damping down the first wave that they may actually have led in some measure to the complacency that allowed some sectors of the population to imagine that the danger was past and covid19 behind us.

Then there are those the PM described scornfully as the lunatic fringe, adherents of one conspiracy theory or another, who still profess that the virus is a hoax.

The new clampdown is not – yet – as extreme as the first; another such lockdown would cause economic devastation and devastating social consequences. Let us hope the population is now sufficiently alarmed to react responsibly and follow the new rules willingly, and that the authorities will not merely warn, but enforce them as needed.