Chester Sam­bra­no

A to­tal lock­down. This is the sit­u­a­tion at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal in El Do­ra­do, Tu­na­puna, af­ter a man who test­ed pos­i­tive for the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) was tak­en there on Thurs­day night.

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived at the lo­ca­tion yes­ter­day, the se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel kept the gate shut and on­ly al­lowed staff mem­bers and oth­er au­tho­rised peo­ple in and out. They were al­so not tak­ing chances with their per­son­al health and were out­fit­ted with masks on their faces and rub­ber gloves on their hands.

Just af­ter 11 am, an East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty ve­hi­cle was ush­ered in and spent just over 20 min­utes on the com­pound. In the front pas­sen­ger seat was a man dressed in full haz­mat pro­tec­tive gear. It is un­clear what was the pur­pose of the vis­it. How­ev­er, oth­er peo­ple who de­sired to en­ter the hos­pi­tal were de­nied by the se­cu­ri­ty, even peo­ple try­ing to de­liv­er food to staff mem­bers or vis­it rel­a­tives who were there be­fore for tu­ber­cu­lo­sis treat­ment.

But while the sit­u­a­tion seemed un­der con­trol at the fa­cil­i­ty, res­i­dents of the El Do­ra­do com­mu­ni­ty were said to be con­cerned about the COVID-19 virus be­ing so close to home.

Apart from at least two dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties, the area al­so hous­es two sec­ondary schools - El Do­ra­do East Sec­ondary and El Do­ra­do West Sec­ondary - close to the hos­pi­tal.

Coun­cil­lor for Cau­ra/Par­adise/Tacarigua Prakash Bharath said, “Burgess­es are very un­clear. They may have some knowl­edge of it prob­a­bly from the tele­vi­sion and some of them don’t, but I am say­ing we need per­son­nel to come in­side of here, come in­to the com­mu­ni­ty, we have a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre we could meet with the res­i­dents and al­lay their fears.”

Even the taxi dri­vers who work the route reg­u­lar­ly are now mash­ing the brakes on ven­tur­ing up the hill where the hos­pi­tal is sit­u­at­ed.

“Well some of the taxi dri­vers not will­ing to go up to the hos­pi­tal i could tell you that up to this morn­ing one of the guys told me he not car­ry­ing no staff or vis­i­tor,” taxi dri­ver Bri­an Bal­roop said.

Bal­roop has been ply­ing his trade in the com­mu­ni­ty for 15 years and has de­vel­oped a good rap­port with his reg­u­lar pas­sen­gers. He said there are now some wor­ried res­i­dents.

“Some of the peo­ple don’t like the fact that they are us­ing Cau­ra as a cen­tre, they say is a pop­u­lat­ed area and it could pass through here and you don’t know what could hap­pen. Plen­ty peo­ple here don’t re­al­ly like that idea.”

But Bal­roop said has been pay­ing at­ten­tion to the ad­vi­sories on the news and is not too con­cerned and would con­tin­ue his reg­u­lar work once the sit­u­a­tion does not get out of hand.