BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) di­rec­tor and the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) re­gion­al di­rec­tor for the Amer­i­c­as, Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne, says they nei­ther an­tic­i­pat­ed nor were they pre­pared for the mag­ni­tude of the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. She is al­so warn­ing the re­gion to pre­pare for a full blast with­in the next few weeks.

She made the com­ment dur­ing a vir­tu­al press brief­ing yes­ter­day on PA­HO's re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic and the evolv­ing sit­u­a­tion of the virus in the Amer­i­c­as.

Ei­ti­enne ad­mit­ted that the rate and mag­ni­tude of the trans­mis­sion sur­prised PA­HO al­though it be­gan look­ing at it late last year.

She said in No­vem­ber 2019 the or­gan­i­sa­tion felt it was time to re­view pan­dem­ic plan­ning and called up emer­gency per­son­nel to 'dig up' pan­dem­ic plans. In the first week of De­cem­ber 2019, those plans were pre­sent­ed to an ad­vi­so­ry group and PA­HO's ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment.

“Our in­struc­tion was to go and work with every mem­ber state to re­vise their plans and to be­gin to plan,” Eti­enne said.

Not­ing it was dif­fi­cult to pre­dict the mag­ni­tude of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, she added, “This pan­dem­ic has re­al­ly sur­passed all of the oth­ers we have had in terms of its mag­ni­tude. I was al­so sur­prised by our in­abil­i­ty to pro­vide for the re­sources in terms of PPE's (per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment), masks and tests. And the al­most mar­ket fail­ure con­cern­ing those re­quired re­sources.”

At the press brief­ing, which was streamed live from PA­HO's head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, Eti­enne said COVID-19 was yet to hit with full force in the re­gion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and PA­HO ex­pect­ed it would in­ten­si­fy in the next few weeks.

“The rise in hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions and deaths we see in coun­tries high­lights how quick­ly the sit­u­a­tion could change,” she said.

“We must act with ur­gency be­fore the storm hits most of our coun­tries, to pro­tect our­selves, fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties.”

She stressed the cost of any in­ac­tion at this time could not be greater and im­me­di­ate ac­tion was re­quired to ad­dress both struc­tured and long-term needs.

“In the short term, there is a dire need to ex­pand ICU ca­pac­i­ty in the re­gion,” Eti­enne said.

Re­gard­ing long-term plan­ning, Eti­enne said coun­tries need­ed to guar­an­tee that drugs and vac­cines that are be­ing de­vel­oped would be ac­ces­si­ble to all in the re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly in the most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

Eti­enne said fo­cus­ing on so­cial dis­tanc­ing re­mained coun­tries' best bet to re­duc­ing trans­mis­sion and slow­ing the spread of the virus.

“It pre­vents hos­pi­tals from be­ing over­whelmed by too many sick peo­ple at the same time and it al­so keeps doc­tors and nurs­es from hav­ing to make a ter­ri­ble choice about which pa­tients re­ceive care and which pa­tients do not,” she said.

“It is al­so a way to buy time for new treat­ments, med­i­cines and vac­cines that will al­low us to fight COVID-19 and re­cov­er from it.”

She added, “There is no one size fits all ap­proach. It's im­pos­si­ble to ap­ply the same mea­sures from Alas­ka to Tier­ra del Fuego; how­ev­er, coun­tries need to keep that in mind. They need to en­sure that many of our coun­tries in the re­gion who have al­ready im­ple­ment­ed com­mu­ni­ty-wide so­cial dis­tanc­ing, that they are al­low­ing health ser­vices to op­er­ate with­in the ca­pac­i­ty. This is en­cour­ag­ing but it must be sus­tained over a pe­ri­od of time for it to be ef­fec­tive.”

Eti­enne said eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty could on­ly re­turn in full swing when peo­ple feel safe and con­fi­dent that their gov­ern­ments are do­ing all they can to pro­tect them and their loved ones.

“I urge the lead­er­ship in our re­gion to earn this con­fi­dence by be­ing rig­or­ous, ev­i­dence-dri­ven and trans­par­ent in the fight against this pan­dem­ic. On­ly by im­ple­ment­ing the in­ter­ven­tions re­quired for each set­ting guid­ed by sci­ence and sol­i­dar­i­ty, can we slow down and ul­ti­mate­ly break the spread of COVID-19 in our re­gion. And then to­geth­er with­in and across the coun­tries, we can safe­ly get back on our feet,” she said.

She made a spe­cial ap­peal to the pri­vate sec­tor, say­ing it had to be an in­te­gral part of the re­sponse to COVID-19 and must to work with gov­ern­ments to make re­sources avail­able to sup­port the re­sponse.

“As the pan­dem­ic pro­ceeds and mil­lions are eco­nom­i­cal­ly im­pact­ed, I would like you (pri­vate sec­tor) to work with our part­ners and with gov­ern­ments to strength­en the safe­ty net for all, in par­tic­u­lar for the most vul­ner­a­ble," she said.

“We need the might of the pri­vate sec­tor if we are go­ing to ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress COVID-19. It's on­ly in a uni­fied man­ner that we would be able to suc­cess­ful­ly con­front COVID-19.”