The Cou­va Hos­pi­tal is now on to­tal lock­down af­ter re­ceiv­ing 40 new pa­tients who have test­ed pos­i­tive for the nov­el Coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) yes­ter­day.

The pa­tients were part of the del­e­ga­tion of 68 T&T na­tion­als who re­turned home from Guade­loupe last Wednes­day, af­ter the Caribbean cruise they were on was abort­ed af­ter pas­sen­gers on board test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day that there are now 43 COVID pa­tients ward­ed at Cou­va and six at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.

While at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, the Guardian Me­dia team was told by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials that they were in­struct­ed to “lock­down” the en­tire fa­cil­i­ty at about 1.30 pm.

“We can­not let any­one in! No­body at all ... this in­struc­tion came from high above… there are a lot of calls com­ing in and we have strict re­stric­tions not to let any­one in or any­one leave,” a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial said.

Two cars car­ry­ing of­fi­cials from the Reg­is­tered Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion ar­rived to drop off meals for the nurs­es at the hos­pi­tal and they too were turned away. One of the nurs­es sought to get an ex­pla­na­tion but was on­ly told by the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial that he was just “car­ry­ing out in­struc­tions.”

“I am sor­ry but the en­tire hos­pi­tal is un­der lock­down since 45 min­utes ago (re­fer­ring to from since 1.30 pm) and I can­not let any­one in,” the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial told the nurs­ing of­fi­cials.

How­ev­er, a truck from the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) car­ry­ing armed sol­diers was al­lowed in to stand guard at both the en­trance and ex­it gates of the med­ical fa­cil­i­ty.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said all pa­tients were do­ing well at the fa­cil­i­ty and all was dis­closed at yes­ter­day’s me­dia con­fer­ence.

Asked if he knew about the lock­down of the hos­pi­tal and why, Paras­ram replied: “It’s be­cause of the 40 new pa­tients that were brought in there this (Sat­ur­day) morn­ing.”