This coun­try’s 50th COVID-19 case, which was re­vealed yes­ter­day, is an­oth­er im­port­ed case -- the per­son had a re­cent his­to­ry of trav­el.

The Health Min­istry’s 11.29 am and 4.18 pm bul­letins on Sun­day con­firmed the lat­est case fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day’s dis­clo­sure that 40 oth­ers who re­turned home last week had al­so test­ed pos­i­tive.

The 40 were part of the 68-mem­ber group ex­posed to the virus dur­ing a Caribbean cruise that was de­nied en­try to Mar­tinique. They re­turned home and were placed in quar­an­tine at Camp Ba­lan­dra and were trans­ferred to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal ear­ly Sat­ur­day. The 40, who Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said were ex­hibit­ing mild symp­toms, had brought to 49 the num­ber of cas­es up to Sat­ur­day. The re­main­ing 20 peo­ple at Ba­lan­dra are now be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored and have been put on a fresh 14-day quar­an­tine watch.

On Sun­day, the Health Min­istry and Paras­ram con­firmed the 5oth per­son was a new im­port­ed case. Oth­er sources said the per­son al­so wasn’t part of the 68 who were at Ba­lan­dra but had been to a health in­sti­tu­tion.

Med­ical au­thor­i­ties couldn’t say if any of the ini­tial pa­tients will be dis­charged soon. It was re­cent­ly said one of the ini­tial nine had re­cov­ered enough to be dis­charged. Last Thurs­day, Paras­ram said one of the ini­tial nine cas­es had had con­tact with about 66 oth­er peo­ple.

The num­ber of sam­ples be­ing sent for test­ing at the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) con­tin­ues to in­crease--with 306 sam­ples be­ing sent up to yes­ter­day.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has said Gov­ern­ment will be ex­pand­ing test­ing. On Sun­day, he said the 4,000 COVID-19 test kits and 15 ther­mal scan­ners be­ing do­nat­ed by Chi­na should ar­rive this week.

CARPHA has urged re­gion­al states to strength­en health sys­tems and pre­pare to re­spond not on­ly to im­port­ed cas­es but sub­se­quent lo­cal trans­mis­sion. CARPHA’s Re­gion­al Co­or­di­nat­ing Mech­a­nism for Health Se­cu­ri­ty meets this week.

Last Sat­ur­day af­ter the batch of 40 new cas­es was re­vealed, the Health Min­istry em­pha­sised calls for maxi taxi dri­vers to roll down win­dows and where pos­si­ble, lim­it oc­cu­pan­cy to pre­vent bac­te­ria spread. Air con­di­tion­ing is known to dry out lungs and nasal mu­cus mem­branes, mak­ing peo­ple more sus­cep­ti­ble to colds and ag­gra­vat­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases.

Not all dri­vers have heed­ed the ad­vice. Up to last Sat­ur­day, pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling in cer­tain ve­hi­cles for long-dis­tance trips had to ap­peal to dri­vers to put their win­dows down. Yes­ter­day, the Health Min­istry again ad­vised that all pub­lic trans­porta­tion ve­hi­cles should op­er­ate with win­dows open and lim­it oc­cu­pan­cy.

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said he was us­ing moral sua­sion with maxi taxi as­so­ci­a­tions with whom he’d met re­cent­ly and whom he’ll be meet­ing again this week.

“The as­so­ci­a­tions we’ve reached out to are in full sup­port of our rec­om­men­da­tions. They’ve in­struct­ed all dri­vers to do it. We’ll meet (as­so­ci­a­tions) again to seek more co-op­er­a­tion,” Sinanan said, adding he didn’t be­lieve dri­vers weren’t rolling down win­dows.

Gov­ern­ment’s (Low­er House) leader Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said Par­lia­ment will like­ly meet Wednes­day to deal with the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund to ob­tain fund­ing to as­sist with cri­sis costs. The oil price, which re­cent­ly dropped to the thir­ties, again dropped to US$22.83 yes­ter­day.

Af­ter en­try to T&T was shut down from mid­night last night to na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als, a Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial said yes­ter­day, T&T’s au­thor­i­ties in Venezuela would be mon­i­tor­ing the 70 na­tion­als strand­ed in Mar­gari­ta. They had no de­tails on how the sit­u­a­tion may be with those “out­side,” since they not­ed the is­sue was in For­eign Af­fairs’ ju­ris­dic­tion. There hasn’t been word from that min­istry and Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses didn’t an­swer calls to his cell­phone yes­ter­day.

And af­ter Gov­ern­ment last Fri­day an­nounced con­tin­gen­cies for a pe­ri­od on cer­tain op­er­a­tions--in­clud­ing li­cences and fil­ing of Com­pa­ny Reg­is­ter forms --there have been queries from var­i­ous quar­ters on how two im­pend­ing tax dead­lines would be met.

One in­volves VAT dead­line on March 25 (for Cat­e­go­ry B VAT-reg­is­tered en­ti­ties and set­tle­ment of the VAT li­a­bil­i­ty con­cern­ing Jan­u­ary-Feb­ru­ary pe­ri­od. The oth­er is the March 31 dead­line for Cor­po­ra­tion Tax/Busi­ness Levy and Green Fund Levy for the 2020 First Quar­ter. Com­pa­nies and self-em­ployed peo­ple are in those cat­e­gories. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert didn’t re­spond to an emailed query on this.