Chief Medical Officer, Dr Roshan Parasram has announced that younger persons without comorbidities have recently died from Covid-19.
Dr Parasram made the statement at the Prime Minister’s media conference held today (Monday 03 May, 2021) at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s.
Dr Parasram said, “We did see a couple deaths in younger people – one in the 30’s, a couple in the 40’s without comorbidities in the last few days – which is a worrying trend and it is a concern.”
While testing to confirm if these deaths have been linked to the P1 variant (Brazilian variant) is still to be done, Dr Parasram said the variant which is said to be 1.5 to 2.5 times more transmissible, certainly has a role to play in the increasing number of Covid-19 cases reported.
He said, “what we are seeing is increasing viral loads of persons, meaning they have a higher viral load, and a lot of times, they have less symptoms in the early stages”.
He said this is a recipe for quicker spread as it causes the virus to move through a population much faster.
Dr Parasram also revealed that the Ministry of Health is reporting 10 additional cases of the variant, which were detected among samples from across the country. This brings the total number of positive samples for the P1 variant to 25.
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