PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

A dozen Ramish and Leela Su­per­mar­ket Lim­it­ed staff mem­bers who have been test­ed COVID-19 af­ter pos­si­bly com­ing in­to con­tact with one of the coun­try’s lat­est pa­tients have been told to stay home al­though the busi­ness re-opens on Sat­ur­day.

The su­per­mar­ket’s di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions Yunus Ibrahim con­firmed on Fri­day that the work­ers will stay home pend­ing re­sults and no­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Min­istry of Health, as pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures con­tin­ue to be tak­en with con­tact trac­ing for case 139 still on­go­ing.

“The 12 front­line staff, I gave them a whole list of staff, but they de­ter­mined who were front­line and who had to be test­ed,” said Ibrahim, who ex­plained the min­istry as­sessed which staff mem­bers had the high­est pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­ter­act­ing with the pa­tient.

The su­per­mar­ket was or­dered closed for sani­ti­sa­tion on Thurs­day af­ter it was learnt that the COVID-19 pa­tient, an el­der­ly woman, had vis­it­ed the busi­ness. They were cleared to re-open to­day af­ter two days of sani­ti­sa­tion, in­clud­ing the use elec­tro-sta­t­ic tech­nol­o­gy which was un­der­tak­en at the gro­cery along East­ern Main Road, San Juan, yes­ter­day.

Elec­tro­sta­t­ic spray­ing, Guardian Me­dia was in­formed, pos­i­tive­ly charges the chem­i­cal with an elec­tri­cal cur­rent, which caus­es it to wrap around and cling to all neu­tral sur­faces, al­low­ing the chem­i­cal to be more ef­fec­tive in killing the virus wher­ev­er it may con­t­a­m­i­nate.

Ibrahim said pri­or to the or­der to close on Thurs­day, staff had been fol­low­ing all nec­es­sary pro­to­cols to avoid any po­ten­tial spread and they will con­tin­ue to do so when they re-open to­day.

“No­body shops with a mask and my coun­ters and shelves have been con­sis­tent­ly wiped,” said Ibrahim, who said he un­der­stood nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions had to be tak­en.

He added, how­ev­er, that if cus­tomers fol­lowed the guide­lines of wash­ing hands and wear­ing masks, po­ten­tial con­trac­tion of the virus would be re­duced.

Sev­er­al oth­er busi­ness­es in San Juan and Aranguez al­so closed for sani­ti­sa­tion to be done af­ter be­ing con­tact­ed by the min­istry.

Pen­ny­wise branch­es on Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain and Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, St James re­spec­tive­ly were al­so closed on Wednes­day for sani­ti­sa­tion af­ter con­tact trac­ing was done for pa­tient 139.