Forty new pa­tients who have test­ed pos­i­tive for the nov­el Coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) have been ad­mit­ted to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh just con­firmed this at a me­dia con­fer­ence Sat­ur­day.

The Min­is­ter said all the new cas­es were from among the batch of na­tion­als who just re­turned from an ill-fat­ed cruise in Guade­loupe.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia had al­so re­ceived two con­fir­ma­to­ry re­ports from a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al at the Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty and an­oth­er em­ploy­ee there that the 40 pa­tients were tak­en to the hos­pi­tal just af­ter 2.30 am on Sat­ur­day.

It was al­so con­firmed that one of the pre­vi­ous pa­tients at the hos­pi­tal had re­cov­ered enough to be dis­charged.

This would now take the over­all cas­es here in T&T to 49 as the toll up to Fri­day had been nine.

Guardian Me­dia was told that all 40 pa­tients are in the same ward.

The doc­tor, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said that the Gov­ern­ment must start broad­en­ing test­ing quick­ly. Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced on Fri­day that they would start this process soon.