An­na-Lisa Paul

Rel­a­tives of Sea Lots com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Cedric “Burkie” Burke, who died at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal on Fri­day, have sent pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram de­mand­ing his med­ical records be re­leased and the state not dis­pose of his body.

They have ex­pressed con­cern about how the health of the 45-year-old fa­ther of 17 had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed so quick­ly.

Burke com­plained about a “gid­dy” feel­ing on Wednes­day and vis­it­ed the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH) for a med­ical check-up. Some­one close to the late busi­ness­man said “he was walk­ing, talk­ing and laugh­ing as nor­mal. He had no fever…noth­ing else.”

Burke went to the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal on Thurs­day morn­ing and was in good spir­its even af­ter he was swabbed for COVID-19, sources close to the fam­i­ly said. He was ward­ed as a pre­cau­tion while he await­ed the re­sults which were re­ceived late on Thurs­day con­firm­ing he had con­tract­ed the virus. He was trans­ferred to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal on Fri­day morn­ing and died lat­er that day.

How­ev­er, his rel­a­tives are ques­tion­ing how quick­ly his test re­sults were re­ceived.

“It have peo­ple wait­ing three, four . . . even sev­en days for a re­sult, but this is the first man to get re­sults so quick­ly,” a rel­a­tive, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, told Guardian Me­dia.

Mem­bers of Burke’s fam­i­ly said they found out about his death along with the rest of the na­tion on so­cial me­dia.

One of them said: “Imag­ine out of the 50 deaths record­ed in the coun­try so far, this is the on­ly one in which the iden­ti­ty of the vic­tim made its way in­to the pub­lic do­main.

“Why? What hap­pened to pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty? No name or ad­dress was ever giv­en, so what hap­pened in this case?”

Ex­press­ing sus­pi­cions that Burke’s death was not as a re­sult of COVID-19, the man added: “If this was true, where are all the white suits? What hap­pened to the con­tact trac­ing? No­body from Burke’s fam­i­ly has been told to self-quar­an­tine. I was with him and no one has called me. I am home with my fam­i­ly and no one is sick. This is a close-knit com­mu­ni­ty . . . we lime to­geth­er, we drink to­geth­er.”

Rel­a­tives said no one from the Min­istry of Health had vis­it­ed Burke’s home or the area to ini­ti­ate con­tact trac­ing.

There was no wake on Fri­day night due to the health reg­u­la­tions but rel­a­tives said in the com­ing days “there will be a night of pure glam­our be­cause that is who he was. There will be well-known artistes per­form­ing and don’t wor­ry, no one will be ar­rest­ed for breach­ing the reg­u­la­tions.”

Burke, who has had a few run-ins with the law, first shot in­to the head­lines through his as­so­ci­a­tion with for­mer Port of Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc Don­ald, who was fired from Cab­i­net f af­ter he showed up at Pres­i­dent’s House for her swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny. He lat­er claimed he went ot the cer­e­mo­ny un­in­vit­ed to sup­port his MP.