Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says the lat­est pa­tient to have con­tract­ed COVID-19 pos­es no threat to the pop­u­la­tion as the pa­tient had no op­por­tu­ni­ty to spread the virus.
Dur­ing Mon­day’s vir­tu­al Min­istry of Health COVID-19 up­date, Deyals­ingh said the pa­tient, a woman, was among a fam­i­ly of three trans­port­ed from Hous­ton, Texas, in the USA to T&T by an air am­bu­lance last Thurs­day. Fol­low­ing the min­istry’s COVID-19 pro­to­cols for re­turn­ing na­tion­als, he said the fam­i­ly was tak­en to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Home of Foot­ball in Cou­va for quar­an­tine.

Na­sopha­ryn­geal swabs were tak­en from the pa­tient of Fri­day and around 5.30 pm on Sat­ur­day, test re­sults con­firmed that one was COVID-19 pos­i­tive.
“The fam­i­ly was nev­er al­lowed to go home, as per pro­to­col. This speaks to how ro­bust we are in Trinidad & To­ba­go be­cause then, we do not have to do any con­tact trac­ing. There is no pos­si­bil­i­ty that oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, oth­er mem­bers of the house­hold, friends, fam­i­ly, pub­lic trans­porta­tion or any­thing would have been an is­sue,” Deyals­ingh said.
Asked why the pa­tient was sent to the Home of Foot­ball, which was used as a step-down fa­cil­i­ty for re­cov­er­ing pa­tients, as op­posed to ei­ther the Cau­ra or Cou­va Hos­pi­tals where pos­i­tive pa­tients are treat­ed, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said af­ter con­sult­ing with the med­ical team at Cau­ra and the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), they de­ter­mined the Home of Foot­ball was a suit­able place for quar­an­tine as the pa­tient was in a con­va­les­cent stage.

Paras­ram said the ex­emp­tion for the fam­i­ly to re­turn was grant­ed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and their role was to de­ter­mine the lev­el of care.
“In this par­tic­u­lar in­stance, it seems that the pe­ri­od of in­fec­tion would have been passed in terms of sig­nif­i­cant in­fec­tion and they (pa­tient) would now be in a con­va­les­cent stage. As you re­mem­ber, the Home of Foot­ball was used for con­va­les­cent pa­tients in the past as a de­cant­i­ng fa­cil­i­ty,” Paras­ram said.

“The pa­tient ac­tu­al­ly has no symp­toms since com­ing to Trinidad on Thurs­day or very mild symp­toms, which were not giv­en on the ex­am­i­na­tion. We con­tin­ue to feel that the best place right now is in that step-down fa­cil­i­ty with­out hav­ing to step up to a hos­pi­tal. Hav­ing said that, of course, if symp­toms de­vel­op or if symp­toms be­come ap­par­ent or get worse, the per­son will be placed in­to one of the hos­pi­tals as need be.”

While the lat­est case does not present a pub­lic health threat, Deyals­ingh said the min­istry re­mains con­cerned about im­port­ed cas­es, as it shows the threat still ex­ists, es­pe­cial­ly as more peo­ple re­turn to T&T. He said there was a call by “one ill-in­formed per­son” to bring in 1,000 peo­ple be­cause there are 1,000 beds in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem. How­ev­er, he said the glob­al COVID-19 tal­ly to date was al­most the pop­u­la­tion size of the Cari­com re­gion. 
As the re­tail sec­tor re­turned to work yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh said there is now an in­creased risk of peo­ple be­ing in­fect­ed.

On the is­sue of the use of face masks, he gave an ex­am­ple of speak­ing to 20 peo­ple on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade on Sun­day. Of the 20 peo­ple, he said on­ly two wore masks al­though they were sit­ting in close prox­im­i­ty to each oth­er. How­ev­er, he said when he asked them why they were not wear­ing masks they all had them in their pock­ets. 
Deyals­ingh said he wel­comed the re­sump­tion of re­tail busi­ness since it would boost em­ploy­ment for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. How­ev­er, to pro­tect the coun­try’s safe po­si­tion, Deyals­ingh ap­pealed to re­tail­ers, man­agers and mall own­ers to de­ny en­try or ser­vice to any­one who does not wear a mask. He said hand sani­tis­ers in stores for cus­tomers’ use will al­so im­prove prop­er hy­giene.
“You have the au­thor­i­ty to tell peo­ple, ‘No Mask, No Ser­vice!’ This is your con­tri­bu­tion to­wards keep­ing us safe.”