There have been 55 COVID-19 cas­es record­ed with­in the Sec­ondary School sys­tem since stu­dents re­turned to face to face learn­ing on Oc­to­ber 4.

The fig­ures were re­vealed by the Min­istry of Health’s Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Dr Av­ery Hinds at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. Dr Hinds not­ed that the fig­ures pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion did not give a break­down by school but by sev­en ed­u­ca­tion dis­tricts in Trinidad.

Guardian Me­dia was able to ob­tain a copy of the sta­tis­tics.

It showed that be­tween Oc­to­ber 4 and No­vem­ber 5, 217 sus­pect­ed cas­es emerged from the sec­ondary school sys­tem- the high­est of 54 cas­es com­ing from the North East­ern Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict. Of these sus­pect­ed cas­es, 55 re­turned a pos­i­tive test re­sult, the high­est of which came from St George East Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict with 16 cas­es. There were 62 neg­a­tive re­sults re­ceived across the sev­en dis­tricts with the re­sults for 100 peo­ple still pend­ing.

Al­though there was no school-spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion, there are at least six schools that had out­breaks re­port­ed in the pub­lic do­main. These are the Shi­va Boys Hin­du Col­lege, Princes Town East Sec­ondary School, Iere High School, St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School

Bish­op Anstey East and Trin­i­ty Col­lege East High School.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the Vic­to­ria and St Patrick dis­tricts had some of the low­est num­bers of sus­pect­ed and pos­i­tive cas­es. Both had 20 sus­pect­ed cas­es each with sev­en and five pos­i­tives re­spec­tive­ly. These coun­ty’s, how­ev­er, have some of the high­est num­bers of cas­es per 10,000 peo­ple. As of No­vem­ber 7, coun­ty Vic­to­ria had the high­est in­ci­dence of COVID-19 in its pop­u­la­tion at 497.59 per 10,000 peo­ple. How­ev­er, coun­ty St Patrick has the low­est in­ci­dence of COVID-19 in its pop­u­la­tion with 306.98 per 10,000 peo­ple as of No­vem­ber 7.

The South East­ern dis­trict had the fewest num­ber of sus­pect­ed cas­es and pos­i­tives with 19 and sev­en re­spec­tive­ly.

Sec­ondary Schools with sus­pect­ed or pos­i­tive cas­es:

On Oc­to­ber 8, a teacher at the Shi­va Boys Hin­du Col­lege test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, re­sult­ing in an un­known num­ber of staff and stu­dents hav­ing to be quar­an­tined.

On Oc­to­ber 19, a sec­ond staff mem­ber at the Princes Town East Sec­ondary School test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, which fol­lowed two weeks af­ter a col­league con­tract­ed the COVID-19 virus.

On Oc­to­ber 28, five cas­es were re­port­ed at Iere High School, lead­ing to over 60 per­sons hav­ing to be quar­an­tined.

On Oc­to­ber 29, a par­ent of a stu­dent at­tend­ing the Ma­son Hall Sec­ondary School, To­ba­go test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, lead­ing to the school hav­ing to tem­porar­i­ly close its doors.

On No­vem­ber 7, a teacher at the SAGHS test­ed pos­i­tive, lead­ing to nine stu­dents hav­ing to be quar­an­tined.

On No­vem­bers 8, Bish­op Anstey High School East & Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE) re­port­ed two COVID pos­i­tive teach­ers

On No­vem­ber 10, of­fi­cials at SWA­HA Hin­du Col­lege de­nied teach­ers had test­ed pos­i­tive and al­so re­fused to con­firm stu­dents had been ex­posed—al­though the vice prin­ci­pal said sev­er­al stu­dents had been quar­an­tined out of an abun­dance of cau­tion.

On No­vem­ber 11, Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School, To­ba­go sus­pend­ed class­es due to COVID-19 con­cerns. —With re­port­ing by An­na-Lisa Paul