Gail Alexan­der

A sec­re­tary from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Cou­va North MP’s of­fice and her fam­i­ly are among those test­ed for COVID-19. As such, the rest of the of­fice staff is now quar­an­tined and oth­er Cou­va North elec­tion cam­paign­ers who may have been along­side the woman are now on alert.

This was con­firmed by staffers and Cou­va North con­stituen­cy of­fi­cials yes­ter­day. The woman is a rel­a­tive of a Cen­tral Trinidad man who works with ANSA McAL—who re­cent­ly test­ed pos­i­tive.

UNC Cou­va North can­di­date Ravi Rati­ram yes­ter­day de­clined to de­ny or con­firm re­ports from UNC ac­tivists that the woman was part of re­cent Cou­va North cam­paign­ing, in­clud­ing last Sun­day’s events and mo­tor­cade. He said there was no “sec­re­tary” in his of­fice but there was one in the Cou­va North MP’s of­fice. Rati­ram said he was in a meet­ing and didn’t re­ply sub­se­quent­ly.

Cou­va North chair­man Or­lan­do Nages­sar con­firmed the woman is the sec­re­tary in the MP’s of­fice in Chase Vil­lage. He al­so con­firmed she’s a mem­ber of the Cou­va North ex­ec­u­tive, “But that ex­ec­u­tive hasn’t met since (Rati­ram) was se­lect­ed and he’s ap­point­ed a new cam­paign team.”

Nages­sar said he hadn’t spo­ken to the woman (but plans to) and couldn’t say if she’d in­formed the new can­di­date of her sit­u­a­tion.

Af­ter word of the sit­u­a­tion of­fi­cial­ly arose on Tues­day, Guardian Me­dia learned the Min­istry of Health test­ed the per­son. Pos­si­ble in­fec­tion is be­ing traced from Ju­ly 19-20. The per­son lives in a house with her two chil­dren, fa­ther and hus­band.

The woman’s last work­ing day at the of­fice was re­port­ed­ly to­wards the end of last week. UNC of­fi­cials said the woman did tell some col­leagues “up­front” that her hus­band was quar­an­tined for COVID and they told her to stay home.

The min­istry has or­dered that the en­tire eight-mem­ber staff of the MP’s Chase Vil­lage of­fice be quar­an­tined at home for 14 days. The min­istry con­tact­ed staffers to sani­tise the of­fice on Thurs­day but was re­ferred to the Par­lia­ment, which closed the of­fice on Tues­day.

How­ev­er, the of­fice clo­sure had been sched­uled from be­fore and had noth­ing to do with the sus­pect­ed COVID case. Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials have been mak­ing the rounds of T&T in the last two weeks—con­tin­u­ing yes­ter­day—clos­ing MP’s of­fices as the Au­gust 10 elec­tion to choose new MPs draws near­er.

Be­fore Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials ar­rived on Tues­day af­ter­noon, they were alert­ed that a staff mem­ber was quar­an­tined for COVID and to be­ware of pos­si­ble risk. Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials said they had to close the of­fice as per pro­to­col and went to do so equipped with masks.

Of­fi­cials said Cou­va North staff were not in the of­fice much in re­cent weeks and there had been lit­tle ac­tiv­i­ties since peo­ple were out cam­paign­ing. Out­go­ing MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al hasn’t been to the of­fice, as she’s been cam­paign­ing with the La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro can­di­date.

How­ev­er, some UNC ac­tivists have ex­pressed con­cern that they have to wait 14 days and can on­ly be test­ed if they show symp­toms. Col­leagues of the sec­re­tary are ea­ger­ly await­ing the end of their quar­an­tine, since they recog­nise they are sec­ondary and pri­ma­ry con­tacts of the per­son. They al­so ex­pressed con­cern about team sports af­ter they not­ed a Cen­tral res­i­dent they knew man­i­fest­ed symp­toms af­ter a re­cent all-fours tour­na­ment in Lopinot, where an­oth­er tour­na­ment play­er con­tract­ed the virus and is cur­rent­ly be­ing treat­ed for it.

Af­ter the up­surge in COVID cas­es—169 as of yes­ter­day morn­ing—UNC chair­man Pe­ter Kan­hai called for peo­ple to wear masks, but UNC feels wear­ing masks on vot­ing day shouldn’t be manda­to­ry. The PEP par­ty, how­ev­er, is ap­peal­ing for post­pone­ment of polls, not­ing al­most one mil­lion peo­ple could be out on vot­ing day.