Chil­dren have been among the 100 peo­ple who have so far test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 in this coun­try.

While most peo­ple have been fo­cus­ing on the dan­ger the pan­dem­ic posed to the el­der­ly, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram con­firmed on Fri­day that there are chil­dren be­ing treat­ed for the virus.

“In terms of chil­dren, the an­swer is yes,” Paras­ram said dur­ing Fri­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence host­ed by the Min­istry of Health.

Af­ter re­ports emerged that a COVID-19 case had died be­fore they could be tak­en to the Cou­va or Cau­ra hos­pi­tal for treat­ment, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Paras­ram warned against peo­ple at­tempt­ing to bat­tle out po­ten­tial symp­toms at home.

“If you don’t go in­to a fa­cil­i­ty you are con­demn­ing your fam­i­ly to death. If you are reck­less you con­demn your chil­dren, you con­demn your par­ents and you con­demn your grand­par­ents to death,” warned Deyals­ingh.

Paras­ram ex­plained that such a stance was par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous to those who were most at risk to the virus—the el­der­ly and those with pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tions.

“Pa­tients may have mild symp­toms, they think it was a vi­ral ill­ness and you don’t want to go in­to Cou­va. We un­der­stand that may hap­pen. But we have seen cas­es that peo­ple wait too long and they come in with very se­vere symp­toms and they have ac­tu­al­ly died,” Paras­ram said.

“So we are try­ing to pre­vent, if you don’t let us know ear­ly on in a dis­ease what your symp­toms are, when we can deal with you, well, when you are mild and you wait too long, the ul­ti­mate end can be death in terms of not be­ing able to man­age it prop­er­ly.”

The CMO ex­plained that try­ing to wait it out less­ened the win­dow for treat­ment as well.

“Stay­ing away too long, you need to present your­self, es­pe­cial­ly if you are in those high-risk groups, to us as ear­ly as pos­si­ble so we can see what we are deal­ing with and make sure it is not COVID from an ear­ly date and put the pre­ven­ta­tive med­ical mea­sures in place to sup­port your care as ear­ly as pos­si­ble and pre­vent mor­tal­i­ty,” he said.

He al­so ad­vised the at-risk groups, ill or well, to take the pre­cau­tion of wear­ing a mask.

“We are say­ing clear­ly, all per­sons who are ill, whether you are at home or oth­er­wise, you should be wear­ing a mask,” Paras­ram said.

“Per­sons with­in the high-risk groups, those who are el­der­ly, have di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, any of those ill­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly if you are go­ing in­to su­per­mar­kets, pub­lic trans­port, mar­kets, banks, you should be wear­ing a mask. It doesn’t have to be a very high-tech mask not N95, not even sur­gi­cal, some sort of sim­ple mask should suf­fice. If you think your per­son­al risk is great, you should wear a mask.”

Ear­li­er this week, the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol in the Unit­ed States put out a sim­i­lar ad­vi­so­ry urg­ing the pub­lic to wear non-med­ical, cloth masks.

Paras­ram yes­ter­day al­so stressed that health­care work­ers wear masks.

“All health­care work­ers should be wear­ing a mask. There are tiers of masks we should be wear­ing. Per­sons who are wear­ing N95 are the front­line peo­ple who would be do­ing in­va­sive pro­ce­dures, your in­fec­tion pre­ven­tion nurs­es and de­part­ments would guide the physi­cians and have been train­ing them as to which masks to wear them,” Paras­ram said.