Sto­ry by RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

With an­oth­er death record­ed last night, bring­ing the COVID-19 death count to 6, and three ad­di­tion­al con­firmed cas­es lead­ing to a new to­tal of 97, the Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC says there is ur­gent need for in­creased test­ing to pre­vent dead­ly spread.

She al­so said there's need for posthu­mous test­ing of all per­sons who died in the tar­get pe­ri­od of flu-like or re­lat­ed COVID-19 symp­toms, and who were not test­ed be­fore their deaths.

“This is for the pro­tec­tion and peace of mind of the fam­i­lies of the de­ceased,” she says, “and health care work­ers who may have treat­ed these per­sons."

In a re­lease is­sued on Fri­day morn­ing, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the in­crease in sta­tis­tics clear­ly in­di­cates an ur­gent need for "the Min­istry of Health to sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease its test­ing ca­pac­i­ty of sus­pect­ed COVID-19 cas­es among the pop­u­la­tion".

The Health Min­istry has con­firmed in its lat­est up­date on Thurs­day that 97 per­sons out of the 688 test­ed so far are pos­i­tive, while six pa­tients have un­for­tu­nate­ly died in the past week.

"In this vein, and in light of its lat­est sta­tis­tics, it is there­fore sim­ply un­ac­cept­able that the Health Min­istry has on­ly test­ed 688 COVID-19 cas­es out of the 20,000 ex­posed per­sons (by their giv­en sta­tis­tics) in the past month, " Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader called on the Min­istry of Health to im­me­di­ate­ly un­der­take:

• Wide­spread test­ing of all pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary health care work­ers deemed to be ex­posed/at risk for COVID-19 from any pos­i­tive pa­tient thus far

• Re-test­ing of all per­sons with symp­toms con­sis­tent with in­fec­tion who ini­tial­ly test­ed neg­a­tive

• Re-test­ing of all per­sons who have re­cov­ered from in­fec­tion and were deemed to be ad­e­quate­ly im­mune.

"Dai­ly me­dia re­ports re­in­force the fact that our pub­lic Health Sec­tor is al­ready over­whelmed by the cri­sis in the face the very se­vere, long­stand­ing lim­i­ta­tions of the pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions, " Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She made a fur­ther rec­om­men­da­tion that the Gov­ern­ment amends the nec­es­sary reg­u­la­tions to un­der­take a joint med­ical Pub­lic/Pri­vate Part­ner­ship ven­ture.

This, she ex­plained, would al­low Pri­vate Med­ical Labs across the coun­try to un­der­take test­ing and, there­by, great­ly as­sist with much need­ed large scale COVID-19 test­ing.

"In­creased large scale test­ing as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty now falls with­in this ‘must do’ range of so­lu­tions at this very frag­ile state of our na­tion’s life, if we are to en­sure our very sur­vival," she said.

With re­gards to the news con­fer­ence held on Thurs­day, dur­ing which health of­fi­cials re­leased a sam­ple con­tact trac­ing GIS lo­ca­tion map of COVID-19 pos­i­tive cas­es through­out the coun­try, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed it as wor­ry­ing.

“This map clear­ly de­picts the po­ten­tial­ly very wide spread of COVID-19, es­pe­cial­ly in three of our most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed re­gions—Ch­agua­nas, the East/West Cor­ri­dor and Port of Spain."

She not­ed that glob­al sta­tis­tics read­i­ly demon­strate that the coun­tries which have pri­ori­tised ear­ly de­tec­tion in their fight against the COVID-19 spread via large scale test­ing of their pop­u­la­tions, have had low mor­tal­i­ty rates and are most suc­cess­ful in con­tain­ing the spread.