Chester Sam­bra­no

chester.sam­bra­no@cnc3.co.tt

T&T has been ranked sec­ond in the world in terms of its readi­ness to end stay-at-home mea­sures but the Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is in­sist­ing our guards should not be let down.

The in­for­ma­tion was re­vealed in an April 23 Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford study en­ti­tled “Lock­down roll­back check­list: Do coun­tries meet WHO rec­om­men­da­tions for rolling back lock­down?”

Ac­cord­ing to the Lock­down Roll­back Check­list por­tion of the re­port, T&T is cur­rent­ly sit­ting sec­ond on­ly to Viet­nam on readi­ness to readi­ness to re­open ac­tiv­i­ty fol­low­ing shut­downs im­ple­ment­ed to fight the virus’ spread.

The sta­tis­tics in the study were based on six cat­e­gories of mea­sures gov­ern­ments need to have in place be­fore rolling back ‘lock­down’ mea­sures as out­lined by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO). It used a colour code to mea­sure the rat­ing, with the bright­est gold rep­re­sent­ing the least ready and the dark­est blue in­di­cat­ing the read­i­est.

The cat­e­gories were:

• COVID-19 trans­mis­sion is con­trolled to a lev­el of spo­radic cas­es and clus­ters of cas­es, all from known con­tacts or im­por­ta­tions; at a min­i­mum, new cas­es would be re­duced to a lev­el that the health sys­tem can man­age based on health­care ca­pac­i­ty.

• Suf­fi­cient pub­lic health work­force and health sys­tem ca­pac­i­ties are in place to en­able the ma­jor shift from de­tect­ing and treat­ing main­ly se­ri­ous cas­es to de­tect­ing and iso­lat­ing all cas­es, ir­re­spec­tive of sever­i­ty and whether there is lo­cal trans­mis­sion or an im­por­ta­tion.

• Out­break risks in high-vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty set­tings are min­imised, which re­quires all ma­jor dri­vers or am­pli­fiers of COVID-19 trans­mis­sion to have been iden­ti­fied, with ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures in place to max­imise phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and min­imise the risk of new out­breaks.

• Pre­ven­tive mea­sures are es­tab­lished in work­places.

• Man­age the risk of ex­port­ing and im­port­ing cas­es from com­mu­ni­ties with high risks of trans­mis­sion.

• Com­mu­ni­ties are ful­ly en­gaged and un­der­stand that the tran­si­tion away from large-scale move­ment re­stric­tions and pub­lic health and so­cial mea­sures —from de­tect­ing and treat­ing se­ri­ous cas­es to de­tect­ing and iso­lat­ing all cas­es—is a “new nor­mal” in which pre­ven­tion mea­sures would be main­tained and that all peo­ple have key roles in pre­vent­ing a resur­gence in case num­bers.

The Ox­ford COVID-19 Gov­ern­ment Re­sponse Track­er (Ox­CGRT) notes that it cur­rent­ly pro­vides in­for­ma­tion rel­e­vant to rec­om­men­da­tions 2, 4 and 6.

“We com­bine this with epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta from the Eu­ro­pean Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol on cas­es and deaths, pro­vid­ed by Our World in Da­ta, which ad­dress rec­om­men­da­tion 1.”

In terms of T&T, for the cas­es con­trolled and man­ag­ing im­port­ed cas­es cat­e­gories, it re­ceived the dark­est blue colour. For com­mu­ni­ty un­der­stand­ing T&T was one tone short of the dark­est blue cod­ing and for test­ing, trac­ing and iso­lat­ing it re­ceived a grey cod­ing.

The Ox­CGRT said “be­cause the da­ta on­ly mea­sures four of six rec­om­mend­ed ac­tions, we should be cau­tious about in­fer­ring what coun­tries are ready to roll­back lock­down from this mea­sure. In­deed, the da­ta pro­vides a bet­ter in­di­ca­tion of what coun­tries are not ready.”

It said, there­fore, that the check­list should be seen as a start­ing point for as­sess­ing a coun­try’s pre­pared­ness for leav­ing lock­down mea­sures.

“In par­tic­u­lar, we note that the Ox­CGRT da­ta mea­sure coun­tries’ stat­ed poli­cies, not how well they im­ple­ment them,” it not­ed.

Asked about the study yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said, “The Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty re­port is a very good re­port, it paints us in an ex­cel­lent light.”

He said it was “tes­ti­mo­ny to what we have been say­ing all along, that our re­sponse to COVID led by the Prime Min­is­ter was a ro­bust one and we would on­ly get this type of recog­ni­tion out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh not­ed that cit­i­zens should not let the Ox­ford re­port “lull us in­to a false sense of se­cu­ri­ty.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the re­port was po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James, who was cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic about mak­ing de­ci­sions sole­ly based on the Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty sta­tis­tics and re­port.

“If you ask me for one rea­son as to why we should not re­open the coun­try, I’d say that we don’t have the right lev­el of com­fort as to the sit­u­a­tion be­cause we have not done the kind of test­ing we should have done,” James said.

He said there is eco­nom­ic wreck­age tak­ing place on both is­lands due to COVID-19 and the Stay-at-Home Reg­u­la­tions and while the econ­o­my could be re­opened, it should not be if the hur­dle of in­ad­e­quate test­ing is not crossed.

James said he was still not con­fi­dent at the amount of test­ing done so far, adding the med­ical per­son­nel may not have a true pic­ture of what is tak­ing place in the coun­try.

Eco­nom­ics lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Mar­lene Attzs, al­so warned against tak­ing ac­tion too quick­ly and from an eco­nom­ic stand­point.

“I think the is­sue of re­open­ing should be based on the Min­istry of Health and if they’re com­fort­able with the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal/clin­i­cal da­ta they have and that should in­form re­open­ing of the econ­o­my,” Attzs said.

“While the Ox­ford re­port puts T&T in a good po­si­tion, I’m sure oth­er fac­tors will dri­ve the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­ci­sion on re­open­ing. We al­so have to be mind­ful of the dy­nam­ics in oth­er coun­tries and fac­tor whether per­sons from those coun­tries might af­fect us when we re­open.”

But an­oth­er econ­o­mist, Dr In­dera Sage­wan, agreed it was time to re­open the econ­o­my but on a phased ba­sis. She said out­side of the re­port, giv­en the length of time of the Stay-at-Home mea­sures thus far, num­ber of cas­es and deaths and gov­ern­ment’s good han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion, the time had come to start eas­ing re­stric­tions. She al­so said the health sys­tem seems ready to han­dle a sec­ond wave of the virus should it oc­cur.

Sage­wan, how­ev­er, cau­tioned that there are oth­er crit­i­cal vari­ables, in par­tic­u­lar, the pre­pared­ness of sec­tors like restau­rants, that have to be re­opened and need to be giv­en pri­or­i­ty. She said mea­sures at busi­ness-places, such as manda­to­ry use of PPE (per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment), ther­mal scan­ners and the heav­ier in­te­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy should be ex­plored.

Sage­wan said this should be the pri­or­i­ty of the eco­nom­ic re­view team set up by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

How coun­tries plan to re­open on phased ba­sis

• Aus­tria will re­open some small­er shops, hard­ware and gar­den stores but peo­ple will have to wear masks to su­per­mar­kets and on pub­lic trans­port. From May 1, all stores, shop­ping cen­tres and hair­dressers will open; restau­rants and ho­tels will open from mid-May at the ear­li­est.

• The Czech Re­pub­lic on April 6 al­lowed shops such as hard­ware and bi­cy­cle stores to re-open. Out­door sports fa­cil­i­ties have al­so re­opened. Start­ing on April 20, stu­dents will be­gin a phased re­turn to col­leges and schools, but high schools are not ex­pect­ed to ful­ly open un­til Sep­tem­ber 1. From June 8, all re­tail stores, in­clud­ing those in shop­ping cen­tres, all restau­rants, ho­tels and oth­er ac­com­mo­da­tion will be al­lowed to re­open.

• Den­mark will re­open day­cares, kinder­gartens and schools (up to 5th grade) on April 22, while oth­er bans, such as on gath­er­ings of more than ten peo­ple, will re­main in place un­til May 10. Church­es, cin­e­mas and shop­ping cen­tres will re­main closed. All fes­ti­vals and large gath­er­ings are banned un­til Au­gust.

• Ger­many will al­low stores with a sales area of less than 800m to re­open on April 20 if they main­tain hy­giene and pre­vent lines from form­ing. Schools with hy­giene plans in place will grad­u­al­ly re­open from May 4, with pri­or­i­ty giv­en to pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary pupils in fi­nal years, while day­care cen­tres will re­main shut. Oth­er so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures, along with bans on large pub­lic events, will re­main in place.

• Italy al­lowed book­stores, laun­dries, sta­tionery stores and chil­dren’s cloth­ing stores to re­open on April 14. “Phase 2” of the three-phase re­open­ing plan will start some­time af­ter May 3. Busi­ness­es that re­open will be re­quired to make hand san­i­tiz­er avail­able, en­force the use of masks in en­closed spaces, and use dis­pos­able gloves to han­dle food and drink.

• Nor­way is pri­ori­tis­ing re­open­ing schools and will be­gin to scale back its lock­down mea­sures from April 20, when kinder­gartens will start to re­open. A week lat­er, schools will re­open for pupils in grades one to four.

• Spain al­lowed many non-es­sen­tial em­ploy­ees to re­turn to work af­ter the East­er week­end. Con­struc­tion and oth­er in­dus­tries have been al­lowed to restart, but non-es­sen­tial stores, bars, and restau­rants re­main closed. Span­ish po­lice are dis­trib­ut­ing more than ten mil­lion masks to com­muters at metro, bus and train sta­tions.

• Switzer­land has ex­tend­ed so­cial dis­tanc­ing re­stric­tions to April 26, but might re­lax oth­er mea­sures lat­er this month, in­clud­ing bor­der con­trols, school clo­sures and bans on gath­er­ings, if the virus’ spread is kept in check.

Oth­er coun­tries that plan to re­open:

• Chi­na has large­ly re­moved re­stric­tions on mo­bil­i­ty while tight­en­ing pol­i­cy to con­tain the virus trans­mis­sion of asymp­to­matic cas­es.

• In­dia has ex­tend­ed what is cur­rent­ly the world’s biggest lock­down through May 3.

• Japan has tight­ened its ap­proach, de­clar­ing a state of emer­gency in Tokyo, Yoko­hama and Os­a­ka, the coun­try’s three biggest cities.