LOYSE VIN­CENT

Sec­re­tary for Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment, Tra­cy David­son Ce­les­tine, was un­able to pro­vide de­tails re­lat­ed to a whop­ping 52 new pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es record­ed in To­ba­go in the last 24 hours.

David­son-Ce­les­tine, who chaired the week­ly TRHA press con­fer­ence, ini­tial­ly at­trib­uted the in­crease to in­creased ca­pac­i­ty.

“The truth be told, we are do­ing more test­ing on the is­land.  As we have com­mu­ni­cat­ed to you be­fore that we have in­creased the test­ing ca­pac­i­ty in To­ba­go,” she told the me­dia brief­ing.

When pressed for a re­sponse to whether or not the in­creased num­ber of cas­es were re­lat­ed to the “clus­ter” at the Scar­bor­ough Re­gion­al Hos­pi­tal, the Health Sec­re­tary said the pur­pose of the con­fer­ence was to fo­cus on pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions to the chal­lenges and is­su­ing in­for­ma­tion as it re­lates to vac­ci­na­tions.

David­son-Ce­les­tine, who dis­put­ed that ef­forts were be­ing made to “cov­er up” the true ex­tent of the pan­dem­ic on the is­land, said the re­port of 52 new cas­es came in mo­ments be­fore the con­fer­ence be­gan, and con­tact trac­ing has been ini­ti­at­ed.