In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to the death of a Waller­field se­cu­ri­ty guard. At a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Min­istry of Health's head of­fice, Port-of-Spain, chair­man of the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (ER­HA) Dr Stephen Bha­gan said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to pos­si­ble dengue vic­tim Nico­las Marin, 21, had start­ed. Marin died on Feb­ru­ary 8 at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal.

Ques­tions were raised by fam­i­ly mem­bers about the cause of death on Marin's death cer­tifi­cate. The cer­tifi­cate stat­ed the cause of death as an ar­bovi­ral ill­ness. Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer An­ton Cum­ber­batch ex­plained to the the me­dia that a dengue screen­ing test was ad­min­is­tered at the hos­pi­tal which re­turned with a neg­a­tive re­sult. Cum­ber­batch said: "The screen­ing tests may be in­con­clu­sive and sam­ples were tak­en at the post-mortem that will be test­ed to de­ter­mine the ac­tu­al cause of death.

"These tests take up to a month to com­plete and we are wait­ing on the re­sults." He ex­plained that doc­tors and pathol­o­gists may give an in­di­ca­tion as to death on death cer­tifi­cates to al­low for quick fu­ner­al pro­ce­dures while con­clu­sive tests were be­ing con­duct­ed. When pressed by the me­dia about any oth­er sus­pect­ed cas­es of dengue in the coun­try, Cum­ber­batch re­vealed there were a few re­port­ed pa­tients that were be­ing treat­ed.

Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis al­so con­firmed at the press con­fer­ence dengue haemor­raglic fever was the cause of death of the first sus­pect­ed vic­tim of 2011, Tri­cia Suer­aj. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis not­ed there were four types of the dengue virus. "Last year most cas­es pre­sent­ed in T&T were for type 2 dengue,"she said. She ex­plained that trends have show that an­oth­er form of the virus has been preva­lent in 2011. "Once re­cov­ered from one form of the virus the pa­tient is im­mune but not ful­ly against the oth­er three," she said.