Of the 51 con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go, on­ly one pa­tient is in an In­ten­sive Care Unit while five are ward­ed at the High De­pen­den­cy Unit at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.

The up­date on the con­firmed cas­es came from Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram at a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, on Mon­day.

Paras­ram said the min­istry has so far test­ed 311 peo­ple who dis­played symp­toms of the virus. There were 51 con­firmed cas­es as of Mon­day, all of which were im­port­ed, Paras­ram said.

He said 41 of those cas­es were on board the Caribbean cruise that was de­nied en­try to Guade­loupe re­cent­ly af­ter pas­sen­gers on board test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, while an ad­di­tion­al ten cas­es al­so had his­to­ries of trav­el­ling in the past.

The 41, he said, were part of the 68 peo­ple who were quar­an­tined in Ba­lan­dra last Wednes­day af­ter re­turn­ing home from the ill-fat­ed cruise.

Paras­ram not­ed that a few days ago on­ly 150 peo­ple had been test­ed for the virus but test­ing had been ramped up since.

"So we dou­bled that in about three to four days. Our test­ing has scaled up sig­nif­i­cant­ly," he said.

He said it was good that out of the 150 test­ed, the min­istry was able to pick up the 40, in­clud­ing two ad­di­tion­al peo­ple.

"Which gives me a bit of hope," he said.

Paras­ram said of the first nine cas­es re­port­ed, one in­di­vid­ual was on a flight and was tak­en straight to Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment.

"In to­tal yes­ter­day (Sun­day), we would have picked up an ad­di­tion­al three per­sons in the air­port and they have been tak­en to Cau­ra straight away as well. So we would have brought the num­ber of peo­ple com­ing from the cruise ship to 73, which is the ac­tu­al num­ber we got in the first in­stance. So we would have been no­ti­fied there were two peo­ple com­ing be­fore the 68. The 68 per­sons came as a group and then three per­sons came on their own yes­ter­day (Sun­day) and were put in Cau­ra as well."

These three sus­pect­ed cas­es, he said, would be test­ed as the symp­toms arise.

Of the 51 pos­i­tive cas­es, Paras­ram said 47 are housed at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal. One of the 47 is in the In­ten­sive Care Unit and re­mains in a sta­ble con­di­tion. Five cas­es are in the High De­pen­den­cy Unit and re­quire oxy­gen but are on the reg­u­lar wards, Paras­ram said.

"They are not ven­ti­lat­ed at this point in time. They are not as crit­i­cal as ICU."

He said there are 41 pa­tients who are al­so ex­hibit­ing mild symp­toms.

Hours af­ter the press con­fer­ence, how­ev­er, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly an­nounced their first con­firmed case.

In a re­lease, the Di­vi­sion of Health and Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment said the per­son ar­rived in To­ba­go on an in­ter­na­tion­al flight on March 18 and was placed in quar­an­tine for 14 days.

It added: “Five days lat­er, on March 22nd, 2020, the in­di­vid­ual de­vel­oped symp­toms and was ad­mit­ted to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. A sam­ple was tak­en and rushed to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) lab­o­ra­to­ry to be test­ed for COVID-19, which has since re­turned pos­i­tive.”

The di­vi­sion said it re­ceived the re­sults at 5.30 pm Mon­day. The state­ment didn't speak to the na­tion­al toll but this would mean T&T had record­ed a 52nd pos­i­tive test, since this pa­tient was not ad­dressed dur­ing the Min­is­ter of Health's alert ear­li­er.

“Giv­en that the in­di­vid­ual is un­well, the per­son will be trans­ferred to Trinidad to un­der­go ad­di­tion­al treat­ment, as per es­tab­lished pro­to­cols,” the state­ment said.