Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The sec­ond phase of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s COVID-19 epi­dem­ic be­gan al­most two weeks ago with some 19 cit­i­zens be­ing in­fect­ed from a source which, de­spite re­cent dis­cov­er­ies, still re­mains un­known.

With­in the past 48 hours, 12 new in­fec­tions have been de­tect­ed, show­ing how rapid­ly the virus is spread­ing across the coun­try. Nine of these new cas­es were in di­rect con­tact with in­fect­ed peo­ple and three of them are pend­ing “epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion”, ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Min­istry of Health. Yes­ter­day’s fig­ures brought the to­tal num­ber of in­fect­ed pri­ma­ry con­tacts up to 27.

The to­tal num­ber of pos­i­tive cas­es rose to 194, with 57 of those be­ing de­tect­ed since Ju­ly 20. Of these 57, eight are re­turn­ing na­tion­als and the oth­ers are lo­calised cas­es.

The lat­est cas­es came even as a twelfth pri­ma­ry school was forced to shut down for sani­ti­sa­tion and the self-quar­an­ti­ning of staff and stan­dard five stu­dents prepar­ing for the Au­gust 20 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment.

Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tions (NPTA) pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Shamil­la Ra­heem told Guardian Me­dia the lat­est school forced in­to COVID pro­to­col was the Ca­paro RC Pri­ma­ry School yes­ter­day.

Re­it­er­at­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion’s call for the im­me­di­ate ces­sa­tion to these class­es, Ra­heem said, “From the last vir­tu­al meet­ing we had with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, we asked for the schools to be closed. That was last Mon­day and it was just two to three schools. Now we have 11-plus climb­ing. What are they wait­ing on? What are they re­al­ly wait­ing on? For a dead child?”

Both the NPTA and T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion have been call­ing for the SEA class­es to be stopped in light of the lat­est COVID de­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools’ Prin­ci­pals’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NAP­SA) has in­stead sug­gest­ed that the con­tact hours be re­duced for the pupils.