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Friday, February 28, 2025

Racquet Centre turns into COVID-19 recovery centre

by

Ryan Bachoo
1783 days ago
20200412
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowely, centre, chats with Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, left ,and Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram during the visit at the National Racquet Sports Centre on Saturday.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowely, centre, chats with Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, left ,and Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram during the visit at the National Racquet Sports Centre on Saturday.

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The Na­tion­al Rac­quet will serve as a step-down fa­cil­i­ty in the gov­ern­ment’s fight against the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic. This was re­vealed on Sat­ur­day as Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley, who toured the ten­nis fa­cil­i­ty along with Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr. Roshan Paras­ram. The Prime Min­is­ter re­leased a state­ment via his Face­book on Sat­ur­day stat­ing, “A vis­it was made to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Ra­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua which has been con­vert­ed in­to a 50-bed, step-down fa­cil­i­ty.”

Pres­i­dent of the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (TATT), Hay­den Mitchell, ex­pand­ed on the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment, telling Guardian Me­dia Sports, “They are us­ing the fa­cil­i­ty as a back-up. In times of na­tion­al cri­sis, all these sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties can al­so dou­ble as cen­tres.”

The gov­ern­ment has con­vert­ed the in­te­ri­or, where the cafe­te­ria is, in­to a hold­ing area for rough­ly 50 beds and the play­ers lounge in­to an area for doc­tors. Mitchell al­so con­firmed the show­er and wash­room fa­cil­i­ties are al­so up to stan­dard.

This has been a com­mon sight around the world. Re­al Madrid’s San­ti­a­go Bern­abéu has been turned in­to a stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre for med­ical ma­te­ri­als while Ger­many's biggest foot­ball sta­di­um, Borus­sia Dort­mund's Sig­nal-Iduna-Park, was par­tial­ly trans­formed in­to a med­ical cen­tre to help treat pa­tients.

Mitchell, who is al­so a Sportt Com­pa­ny di­rec­tor and who heads a sub-com­mit­tee in charge of fa­cil­i­ties con­firmed no pa­tients were yet at the Rac­quet Cen­tre. “They just have it as a back-up as part of their plan,” he said.

While the TATT pres­i­dent said he con­veyed with his ex­ec­u­tive be­fore the de­ci­sion was made, Mitchell gave the as­sur­ance the fa­cil­i­ty will be prop­er­ly san­i­tized when the pan­dem­ic is over. He said, “I had a dis­cus­sion with the chair­man (Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho) and the new­ly re-ap­point­ed Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO Ja­son Williams) and that was high on the itin­er­ary. As soon as they are fin­ished, they have al­ready iden­ti­fied com­pa­nies to come and do the full san­i­ti­za­tion of the en­tire place so that would not be an is­sue and, of course, I will en­sure that they do a prop­er job.”

The na­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty closed with oth­ers two weeks ago as the out­break got worse around the coun­try. He could not con­firm whether any oth­er na­tion­al sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties will be used in the re­cov­ery ef­fort, say­ing, “Not to my knowl­edge but I guess this will be part of their whole na­tion­al plan in terms of the re­sponse.”


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