With the statistics at standstill, the Ministry of Health says it will move into a new phase with a retrospective study of all 116  COVID-19 cases in Trinidad and Tobago. “This will help us make plans for the future developments,” Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said on Thursday morning when he announced that a steering committee chaired by the  Chief Medical Officer, (CMO), Dr Roshan Parasram, to start to invite research and papers on several topics including the clinical experience to date, the public health mitigation strategies and the effectiveness of the parallel health care systems, among others.

The CMO said that a new clinical phenomenon- being reported internationally-namely silent hypoxia, has been noted in the cohort in Trinidad and there will be further investigations.  In this case, he noted there are people with an oxygenation level of 50-60 percent who show no signs of respiratory distress In hospitals around the world, doctors are reporting Covid-19 patients who should be comatose or “seizing” from hypoxia — a lack of oxygen in the body’s tissues —  barely complain of discomfort while breathing. Scans of these patients’ lungs showed signs of pneumonia so severe they should be in terrible pain as they gasp for their next breath.

The Official statics from the Ministry of Health are: