The lit­tle that is known about the Omi­cron vari­ant of COVID-19 should be of enough con­cern to our pub­lic health of­fi­cials for them to make im­me­di­ate prepa­ra­tions for its in­evitable ar­rival in­to this coun­try.  

Based on the rapid spread of this new­ly-iden­ti­fied vari­ant, the im­po­si­tion of trav­el re­stric­tions on eight south­ern African coun­tries, the on­ly con­crete step tak­en so far, may be of lit­tle ef­fect in pre­vent­ing or de­lay­ing its ar­rival with­in T&T’s bor­ders. 

This coun­try, still in the throes of the third wave of COVID-19 in­fec­tions dri­ven by the high­ly vir­u­lent Delta vari­ant, can­not af­ford a dis­joint­ed re­sponse to this lat­est twist in the pan­dem­ic.  

At the very least, there should be a steady flow of in­for­ma­tion and up­dates from Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and his COVID re­sponse team—much more than the as­sur­ances he has al­ready giv­en to “mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and ad­vise the pop­u­la­tion.” The aim should be to counter at every turn the mis­trust and mis­in­for­ma­tion that have stymied pre­vi­ous ef­forts to curb the spread of the coro­n­avirus. 

This week, the coun­try got a glimpse of the reach and in­flu­ence of the an­ti-vaxxers, who man­aged to draw a few hun­dred peo­ple to the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah for an unau­tho­rised demon­stra­tion that bore all the hall­marks of a su­per-spread­er event. 

Sad­ly, while that ac­tiv­i­ty drew crowds, it was quite the op­po­site just a stone’s throw away at the Pad­dock in the Grand Stand, as on­ly a trick­le of peo­ple were go­ing in­to that mass vac­ci­na­tion site to get their jabs. 

Coun­tries that are much bet­ter po­si­tioned than T&T are al­ready on full alert be­cause of the speed with which Omi­cron is sur­fac­ing in var­i­ous lo­ca­tions. In the few days since it was iden­ti­fied in South Africa, Omi­cron had been de­tect­ed in more than a dozen coun­tries and across sev­er­al con­ti­nents. 

T&T can’t af­ford to be com­pla­cent. The strongest pre­cau­tions pos­si­ble must be tak­en be­cause sci­en­tists have warned of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a large wave of in­fec­tions, po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing to a high num­ber of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions. Very strin­gent re­sponse mea­sures will have to be im­ple­ment­ed to avoid un­sus­tain­able pres­sure on the al­ready over­bur­dened par­al­lel health sys­tem. 

It may be weeks be­fore all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Omi­cron vari­ant are iden­ti­fied. What is al­ready known is that it has dozens of mu­ta­tions—some of which are found in oth­er vari­ants, as well as new ones. There are al­so in­di­ca­tions that it might weak­en pro­tec­tion from vac­cines and nat­ur­al im­mu­ni­ty. 

Omi­cron, like oth­er vi­ral strains of COVID-19, may have de­vel­oped by in­cu­bat­ing for a long pe­ri­od with­in an im­muno­sup­pressed in­di­vid­ual, evolv­ing and adapt­ing to in­fect cells more ef­fi­cient­ly and evad­ing the im­mune re­sponse. 

For these and many oth­er rea­sons, it is vi­tal to be pre­pared from now be­cause this is like­ly to be the sternest pan­dem­ic test yet for T&T’s pub­lic health sec­tor. 

Health of­fi­cials here, who have been close­ly ad­her­ing to ad­vice from the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO), should note that the agency has des­ig­nat­ed Omi­cron as a “vari­ant of con­cern.”  

There­fore they must act quick­ly, sus­tain­ing and re­in­forc­ing cur­rent pub­lic health mea­sures, such as mask-wear­ing and so­cial dis­tanc­ing, as well as re­dou­bling sur­veil­lance ef­forts.