RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA &

RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

The coun­try’s COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ues to rise with an­oth­er 15 cas­es be­ing con­firmed by the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day.

In its 6 pm re­lease, the min­istry said an­oth­er eight peo­ple had been con­firmed as pos­i­tive dur­ing the course of day, bring­ing the to­tal cas­es con­firmed yes­ter­day to 15, a new dai­ly high for lo­cal­ly trans­mit­ted cas­es and 225 over­all.

The min­istry said three of the lat­est cas­es had con­tract­ed the virus from oth­er pos­i­tive pa­tients but the ma­jor­i­ty of the oth­ers were now pend­ing epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The news came even as an­oth­er fac­to­ry work­er from Trin­ri­co Steel and Wire Prod­ucts Lim­it­ed in Re­form, South Trinidad, has test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus.

Yes­ter­day, for the sec­ond time this week, over 150 work­ers from the fac­to­ry were sent home as a re­sult of one of their col­leagues test­ing pos­i­tive. Teams from the Min­istry of Health shut down the fa­cil­i­ty and be­gan a thor­ough sani­ti­sa­tion of the fac­to­ry, sit­u­at­ed at Re­form Vil­lage, Gas­par­il­lo.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, a source at the com­pa­ny said an­oth­er work­er had test­ed pos­i­tive. Ex­press­ing con­cern for the safe­ty of his staff, the of­fi­cial said they were con­vinced that fur­ther re­stric­tions should be im­posed to stop the spread.

He said the Health and Safe­ty team had been speak­ing with work­ers, ask­ing them to take all pre­cau­tions to safe­guard them­selves and their fam­i­lies.

“The fac­to­ry this morn­ing (yes­ter­day) is closed to sani­tise. We can­not say if we are open­ing. We are await­ing con­fir­ma­tion from the Health in­spec­tors. I be­lieve they are in dis­cus­sions with the HR de­part­ment at the fac­to­ry com­pound. Once they give us the all-clear, we will re­open,” the of­fi­cial said.

He added, “We are very con­cerned about the lo­cal spread. We have to be con­cerned. In light of the lo­cal cas­es, we think that the Gov­ern­ment should shut down bars and cin­e­mas. This will have to be done soon.”

Trin­ri­co is recog­nised as one of the lead­ing sup­pli­ers of re-bars, weld­ed mesh, nails and fenc­ing and has sup­plied ei­ther re­bar pro­cess­ing or fenc­ing at many projects, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment hous­ing, ho­tels, hos­pi­tals and med­ical fa­cil­i­ties.

The Min­istry of Health al­so con­duct­ed sani­ti­sa­tion at the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fice in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, af­ter a po­lice of­fi­cer at the fa­cil­i­ty was con­tact traced to a pos­i­tive COVID-19 pa­tient.

The fa­cil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to be re­opened for busi­ness on Mon­day.

Mean­while, some pa­tients who are test­ing neg­a­tive at the state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties are now ques­tion­ing why they are be­ing housed in the same shared spaces with the “new” in­com­ing pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es. They fear that should they be neg­a­tive in the sec­ond phase of test­ing and be dis­charged and al­lowed to re­turn to their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies, they may be “tak­ing the virus home with them.” Rel­a­tives of pa­tients who test­ed pos­i­tive are al­so ques­tion­ing the de­lay in get­ting their re­sults.
Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia un­der strict anonymi­ty for fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, a close rel­a­tive of one of the COVID-19 pa­tients said it was “scary and con­cern­ing” to hear that new pa­tients were not be­ing sep­a­rat­ed from the ones who were al­ready at the state fa­cil­i­ties.
“I spoke to my rel­a­tive and was told that there’s on­ly board sep­a­rat­ing each room at the fa­cil­i­ty and it’s about four of them shar­ing a room. My rel­a­tive said that a test was done and the re­sult came back neg­a­tive but yet still every day it have pos­i­tive cas­es com­ing in and they are all to­geth­er,” the rel­a­tive said.

“For in­stance, there is on­ly three bath­rooms and they all have to use the same fa­cil­i­ties...so what will hap­pen now if my rel­a­tive comes back home to us know­ing that my rel­a­tive was among oth­er pos­i­tive cas­es be­cause they are not sep­a­rat­ing any­one? Can I or my chil­dren get the COVID-19? Can my rel­a­tive be pos­i­tive again as a re­sult?”

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram did not an­swer calls to his cell­phone on the is­sue yes­ter­day.