In the midst of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, there are few rev­e­la­tions that will like­ly pan­ic some­one more than find­ing out that a loved one has the virus.

One Trinida­di­an woman re­ceived that con­fir­ma­tion not once, or twice but three times.

Her moth­er, aunt and un­cle, who are be­tween the ages 65-70-years old, all have the virus and are cur­rent­ly ward­ed at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.

Pri­or to that, they were quar­an­tined at Camp Ba­lan­dra with the group of 68 na­tion­als who re­turned from a Caribbean cruise aboard the Cos­ta Favolosa. The ship was de­nied en­try to Mar­tinique af­ter pas­sen­gers test­ed pos­i­tive and the na­tion­als were im­me­di­ate­ly quar­an­tined at Ba­lan­dra af­ter re­turn­ing home last week. A group of 40 of them sub­se­quent­ly test­ed pos­i­tive and were tak­en to Cou­va. An­oth­er of the pas­sen­gers who were at Ba­lan­dra and three oth­ers who were al­so on the ship but came in in­de­pen­dent­ly of the group of 68 sub­se­quent­ly test­ed pos­i­tive, tak­ing the to­tal num­ber of those who test­ed pos­i­tive from the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion on the ship to 44.

The woman, who would on­ly al­low Guardian Me­dia to use her first name, Tri­cia, claims since her rel­a­tives have been back home, no sub­stan­tial in­for­ma­tion has been giv­en to her about the con­di­tion of her hos­pi­talised rel­a­tives.

“Our fam­i­ly is dis­traught. You can­not tell me that they have el­der­ly peo­ple in the hos­pi­tal and the next of kin isn’t be­ing giv­en any in­for­ma­tion,” she said.

With the un­cer­tain­ty, she said her men­tal state is now tor­ment­ed.

“There is ze­ro com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Every sin­gle day I can’t sleep. I can­not rest. I have to take sleep­ing pills right now,” Tri­cia added.

The on­ly up­dates, or the clos­est thing to it, she said, comes from her aunt via nurs­es, not doc­tors.

“We just want them to com­mu­ni­cate. Yes, we know we can­not see them be­cause they are in quar­an­tine, but we just want to know how they are do­ing,” she plead­ed.

Here’s what she claims to know:

Her moth­er was trans­ferred to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal’s In­ten­sive Care Unit on Mon­day. She was re­moved from ICU on Wednes­day.

On Sun­day, her un­cle was trans­ferred to the ICU.

Since then, Tri­cia says she’s heard noth­ing and means she’s un­aware of their con­di­tions. She claims even her aunt is un­able to get up­dates from doc­tors about the con­di­tion of her oth­er two rel­a­tives al­though they are all at the fa­cil­i­ty.

“When I called the hos­pi­tal, they are say­ing the doc­tors are too busy. I’ve tried call­ing the hot­line num­ber whole day, but I can’t get through,” Tri­cia lament­ed.

With each call, her frus­tra­tion is build­ing more and more and that’s why she said she was will­ing to talk to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted she was re­luc­tant to re­veal her full iden­ti­ty be­cause she feared her rel­a­tives may be vic­timised.

“I just don’t know what to do again,” she said.

Tri­cia’s cousin, whose both par­ents are at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, said she al­so feels help­less. How­ev­er, while she wasn’t com­plain­ing about how they are be­ing treat­ed, she called the lack of med­ical up­dates be­wil­der­ing. Not will­ing to share her full name, she said she’s called just about every­one there is to get in­for­ma­tion.

“I think I have the record for most calls made. I think the on­ly per­son I haven’t called is the Prime Min­is­ter,” she said.

“My biggest com­plaint is that I don’t know what’s go­ing on with my par­ents. We haven’t got­ten any in­for­ma­tion from the Min­istry of Health as yet.”

Her fa­ther, who is in the ICU, is 70 and has a his­to­ry of oth­er med­ical con­di­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to med­ical ex­perts, the el­der­ly are the most vul­ner­a­ble to the virus. As of Wednes­day, more than 20,000 peo­ple have been killed, while more than 450,000 have been in­fect­ed by COVID-19.