BRENT PIN­HEIRO

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

In just over a month, peo­ple from all over the world will come to Trinidad and To­ba­go for the great­est show on earth. But if you’ve lit­er­al­ly got the Car­ni­val fever right now, well, it may be more than just the rum and Co­ca-Co­la to blame for that.

That’s right. It is flu sea­son here in T&T, and with so­cial dis­tanc­ing all but a rel­ic of the pan­dem­ic era, the Min­istry of Health is urg­ing the pop­u­la­tion to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

The warn­ing comes as flu cas­es surge in the Unit­ed States and doc­tor vis­its there spike to their high­est lev­els since 1997.

“The Min­istry of Health is aware of re­ports emerg­ing from the Unit­ed States re­gard­ing in­creased in­fluen­za ac­tiv­i­ty,” the Min­istry said in a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia. “With the in­creased so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties for the Car­ni­val sea­son, we con­tin­ue to en­cour­age mem­bers of the pub­lic… to avail them­selves of the in­fluen­za vac­cine as ear­ly as pos­si­ble.”

While sub-clade K—a new­ly iden­ti­fied flu strain—is re­spon­si­ble for all but four U.S. states re­port­ing high or very high flu ac­tiv­i­ty, a dif­fer­ent strain is cir­cu­lat­ing here at home.

The health min­istry says, based on avail­able epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta, In­fluen­za B (Vic­to­ria lin­eage) is the dom­i­nant strain in T&T. Symp­toms in­clude fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, fa­tigue and headache.

The locations where the flu vaccine will be made available to the public, as part of an outreach programme conducted by the Ministry of Health and Regional Health Authorities. [Image courtesy Ministry of Health]

MINISTRY OF HEALTH

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions sent via What­sApp, the Min­istry told Guardian Me­dia that while it has seen an in­crease in in­fluen­za, it has not ob­served any “un­usu­al sever­i­ty” be­yond what is ex­pect­ed for the sea­son.

The flu sea­son typ­i­cal­ly runs from Oc­to­ber to May, with peak ac­tiv­i­ty be­tween De­cem­ber and March.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, up­take has been slow de­spite the vac­cine be­ing free. Of the 65,000 dos­es pro­cured by the gov­ern­ment for the cur­rent flu sea­son, on­ly 15,000 have been ad­min­is­tered so far. The Min­istry says it will con­tin­ue to of­fer the vac­cine free of charge at all pub­lic health cen­tres.

To reach more peo­ple with the vac­cines, it al­so has launched an out­reach pro­gramme across Trinidad. Over the next three weeks, the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties will host ad­di­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion sites at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry, in­fluen­za virus­es can un­der­go ge­net­ic changes, but the sea­son­al in­fluen­za vac­cine re­mains ef­fec­tive in re­duc­ing the risk of se­vere ill­ness, com­pli­ca­tions, hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and even death.

The Min­istry as­sures, how­ev­er, that of­fi­cials re­main alert and con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor in­fluen­za-like ill­ness across the health sys­tem.