Sev­en more peo­ple have lost their lives to COVID-19, while an­oth­er 257 peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

In its up­date for to­day, Fri­day 20 Au­gust 2021, the Min­istry notes that these lat­est deaths have pushed up the na­tion­al death toll to 1,215 lives lost.

In ad­di­tion, the 257 new pos­i­tive cas­es, based on sam­ples tak­en dur­ing the pe­ri­od Au­gust 16th to Au­gust 19th, 2021, mean that there are now 5,728 ac­tive cas­es of COVID-19 in the coun­try, at this time.

And with news that the 108,000 WHO-ap­proved John­son & John­son COVID-19 vac­cines from the African Med­ical Sup­plies Plat­form ar­rived in T&T to­day, vac­ci­na­tion rates are ex­pect­ed to in­crease ex­po­nen­tial­ly over the com­ing weeks.

Cur­rent­ly, some 355,822 peo­ple in the coun­try are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, hav­ing re­ceived two dos­es of a COVID-19 vac­cine—ei­ther Sinopharm or As­traZeneca or Pfiz­er.

And some 472,946 peo­ple have re­ceived their first dos­es of a COVID-19 vac­cine, as of to­day, Fri­day, the Min­istry’s up­date re­ports.

With re­gard to the Pfiz­er vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve among young peo­ple 12 to 18 years, on­ly one per­son re­ceived their sec­ond dose to­day, while 3,436 young­sters re­ceived their first dose of the vac­cine.

The Health Min­istry al­so notes in its up­date:

● 323 per­sons are still hos­pi­talised for COVID-19; up from 318 pa­tients on Thurs­day.

● 5,050 per­sons are in home self-iso­la­tion; down from 5,199 pa­tients on Thurs­day.

● 130 per­sons are in State quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties; up from 102 pa­tients on Thurs­day.

● 98 pa­tients are still re­cov­er­ing in step/down fa­cil­i­ties; up from 96 pa­tients on Thurs­day.