To­ba­go’s sec­ond pos­i­tive nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pa­tient does not have any trav­el his­to­ry, a sit­u­a­tion which now his co-work­ers at the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal wary about whether they were ex­posed to the virus.

The male health­care work­er is at­tached to the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment and af­ter his test came back pos­i­tive, the hos­pi­tal was sani­tised yes­ter­day and work­ers were of­fered coun­selling. His case was an­nounced even as the Min­istry of Health an­nounced the death of a sec­ond pa­tient from the virus, an el­der­ly man, yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary for Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine tried to al­lay the fears and safe­ty con­cerns of oth­er staff mem­bers.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said the work­ers were now their pri­or­i­ty.

“I want to em­pha­sise to the pub­lic, I want to em­pha­sise to all health­care work­ers that they are a pri­or­i­ty in this par­tic­u­lar in­stance and I wish to give to them all the as­sur­ance that all is be­ing done to en­sure that they are all safe,” David­son-Ce­les­tine said.

“I know that there are con­cerns but our very ca­pa­ble doc­tors have been meet­ing with them, al­lay­ing the fears and ad­dress­ing all the ques­tions that they may have.”

It was re­vealed that when the em­ploy­ee first showed symp­toms, in­clud­ing a fever, he wore a mask and alert­ed his su­per­vi­sor. He was then al­lowed to leave to self-quar­an­tine. Hav­ing re­ceived the re­sults, the work­er and his fam­i­ly mem­bers have since been iso­lat­ed.

Oth­er mem­bers of staff con­tin­ue to work but are on the look­out for any signs of the virus.

Asked how the em­ploy­ee con­tract­ed the virus, Head of the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment, Dr Ian Sam­my, re­vealed they were un­sure as the work­er had no trav­el his­to­ry and had not been in con­tact with the first per­son who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 on the is­land. How­ev­er, he re­fused to di­vulge any more in­for­ma­tion on the work­er as he did not want to breach any con­fi­den­tial­i­ty guide­lines.

Sam­my said de­spite the sit­u­a­tion, em­ploy­ees con­tin­ue to car­ry out their du­ties.

“My staff in the Emer­gency De­part­ment are the front­line staff. I will tell you that from the be­gin­ning of this, we have all been anx­ious and some­what afraid of what may be de­vel­op­ing, both for our pa­tients and al­so for our­selves. But I can tell you that to date, I have not had a sin­gle staff mem­ber in my de­part­ment who refuse to do their job,” Sam­my said. David­son-Ce­les­tine said meet­ings were held with the staff to in­form them of the sit­u­a­tion and pro­vide them with the nec­es­sary psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port. She said the hos­pi­tal has been and con­tin­ues to be deeply sani­tised, while reg­u­lar clean­ing and dis­in­fec­tion will con­tin­ue. She al­so said con­tact trac­ing is on­go­ing.

David­son-Ce­les­tine added that in light of the COVID-19 cri­sis, nine doc­tors and 15 nurs­es had been hired on a short-term ba­sis to aug­ment the cur­rent hu­man re­source.

The hos­pi­tal Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment re­mained func­tion­al de­spite word of the pos­i­tive case yes­ter­day.

David­son-Ce­les­tine re­mind­ed the pub­lic to call the To­ba­go COVID-19 hot­line (800-HEAL) to re­port any­one who has had a trav­el his­to­ry with­in the last 14 days and have not been in self-quar­an­tine.