Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Schools will not be closed to ac­com­mo­date sus­pi­cions of an A/H1N1 case or the con­fir­ma­tion of one vic­tim of the virus at the ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) at the Health Min­istry Dr An­ton Cum­ber­batch has said. "There is no ben­e­fit to the clo­sure of schools or of­fices," he said. "If you have a sus­pect­ed case of A/H1N1 from that school or of­fice there is no ben­e­fit to the clo­sure of school or of­fice if there is one con­firmed case. There is no ben­e­fit." He spoke at yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence host­ed by the Min­istry of Health to give an up­date on the H1N1 virus in T&T. "You have to demon­strate in each case (that there is) ac­tive trans­mis­sion of the virus with­in that school set­ting be­fore we make a rec­om­men­da­tion to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for the clo­sure of class­es," he said.

He said the pre­ferred drug for H1N1 treat­ment–Tam­i­flu should be avail­able for free at both pri­vate and pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties. Cum­ber­batch said the Health Min­istry was for­mal­is­ing a re­la­tion­ship with all pri­vate hos­pi­tals to keep a stock of Tam­i­flu on their com­pounds. He said of­fi­cials at pri­vate hos­pi­tals could call the CMO's of­fice for free sup­plies of the drug. Cum­ber­batch al­so not­ed that pri­vate physi­cians were able to get free Tam­i­fu sup­plies on re­quest to their coun­ty med­ical of­fi­cer of health. He cau­tioned pa­tients at both pri­vate hos­pi­tals and pri­vate physi­cians against mak­ing pay­ments for the free Tam­i­flu sup­plies.