As the Gov­ern­ment gave the green light to re­sume greater eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and an­nounced an eas­ing of re­stric­tions on Sat­ur­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram urged cit­i­zens not to be­come com­pla­cent as they go about their dai­ly busi­ness.

Join­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley vir­tu­al­ly as he pro­vid­ed the clin­i­cal up­date for the 24 hours from 4 pm on Oc­to­ber 23 to Oc­to­ber 24, Paras­ram said just un­der 50,000 tests have so far been con­duct­ed by both the pri­vate and pub­lic health sec­tors.

With 5,487 pos­i­tive cas­es be­ing record­ed so far, Paras­ram said 3,945 peo­ple had re­cov­ered, with 1,438 spread across hos­pi­tal and home iso­la­tion.

He re­vealed that of the 41 new pos­i­tive cas­es record­ed for the pe­ri­od, 11 peo­ple had ar­rived on a repa­tri­a­tion flight from the US, while the re­main­ing 30 were from a lo­cal source.

Adding that sev­en more pos­i­tive cas­es had been record­ed in peo­ple that ar­rived on a repa­tri­a­tion flight from Bar­ba­dos with­in the same 24-hour pe­ri­od, Paras­ram said that in the last week a to­tal of 35 pos­i­tive cas­es had been record­ed from among peo­ple re­turn­ing to T&T. There was a to­tal of 300 pos­i­tive cas­es record­ed in the past week.

He said the im­port­ed cas­es now rep­re­sent­ed around 11 per cent of the pos­i­tiv­i­ty rate. Mean­while, the deaths have con­tin­ued to in­crease as an­tic­i­pat­ed. Sat­ur­day’s death toll stood at 105.

He said there were 71 peo­ple ward­ed in hos­pi­tals; 42 at step-down fa­cil­i­ties; 157 at quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties; and 1,317 peo­ple in home iso­la­tion.

Paras­ram said as more spaces be­came avail­able at state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties, they had been able to ac­com­mo­date more peo­ple want­i­ng to re­turn home.