(Trinidad Express) Epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds confirmed yesterday that 56 of 1,437 people who have died from the Covid-19 virus since vaccinations started in April were fully vaccinated.
This means that at the time of their death, more than two weeks had elapsed since their vaccination regime was completed, he said at yesterday’s Covid-19 virtual news conference hosted by the Ministry of Health.
“So that’s 3.8 per cent or four per cent at most. So 96 per cent of the fatalities that have continued to occur continue to be among the unvaccinated,” he added.
Hinds said a further breakdown of this data showed that most of the 56 fully vaccinated patients had underlying medical conditions, already diagnosed in some instances, that compromised their body’s ability to respond to the virus.
“There are sometimes instances in which individuals do not know that they have known underlying conditions that would have contributed to death. But what the advice would be to everyone is yes, make sure to get vaccinated,” he said.
“Also what we are noting is that, in some cases, after individuals are diagnosed with Covid and they are deteriorating, there is still some hesitancy to actually access the healthcare system. So when an ambulance is called, there’s hesitancy to use that service to go and get additional higher-level care.
“So we want to encourage persons that when there is a need to step up your care that you do it as early as possible, as opposed to waiting until there is very little that can be done. This is a trend that we have noticed and I think we’ve spoken about it previously,” Hinds added.
