There are on­ly three more In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) spaces avail­able in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem in T&T for COVID-19 pa­tients, as of Mon­day morn­ing.

Per­sons with con­cerns about the safe­ty of COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have their ques­tions an­swered and fears al­layed by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, with the avail­abil­i­ty of The Vac­cine Hes­i­tan­cy Hot­line—a joint project of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­ease Al­liance (TTNC­DA) and Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO).

At this rate, Christ­mas in T&T, some 2,000 peo­ple will be dead of COVID-19 since the start of the virus. The fig­ure up to Thurs­day was 1,629. Un­til 90 per cent of us are ei­ther vac­ci­nat­ed or have got­ten COVID, the pan­dem­ic is here to stay.

The coun­try's COVID-19 death toll now stands at 1,639 af­ter six more peo­ple in­fect­ed with the dis­ease died.

The coun­try has en­tered in­to the In­fluen­za (Flu) sea­son but as the Min­istry of Health rolled out its vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve for this virus, which is run­ning si­mul­ta­ne­ous to its COVID-19 im­mu­niza­tion dri­ve, there can be some un­cer­tain­ty of how these shots should be tak­en.

The In­ten­sive Care Units (ICUs) and High De­pen­den­cy Units (HDUs) at the na­tion's COVID-19 treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties are ap­proach­ing ca­pac­i­ty as more se­vere­ly and crit­i­cal­ly ill pa­tients are be­ing ad­mit­ted.

An­oth­er six peo­ple have lost their lives to COVID-19, while an­oth­er 234 more peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

Se­wa In­ter­na­tion­al TT (Se­wa TT) is do­nat­ing 1,000 KN95 Masks to every sec­ondary school in Trinidad and To­ba­go, a to­tal of 184,000 masks, over the next three weeks to the 184 sec­ondary schools in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

The Min­istry of Health con­tin­ues its na­tion­al COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve this week­end, at se­lect vac­ci­na­tion sites.

An­oth­er eight peo­ple have lost their lives to COVID-19, while an­oth­er 218 more peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

This coun­try’s Min­istry of Health has re­ceived a do­na­tion of a Poly­merase Chain Re­ac­tion (PCR) ma­chine from the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment, val­ued at US$52,928.

Four more peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed over the past 24 hours for breach­ing the cur­few stip­u­lat­ed un­der the cur­rent Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est COVID Reg­u­la­tions en­force­ment up­date from the Po­lice Ser­vice.