SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Start­ing from to­day, if you have the COVID-19 virus but do not have mod­er­ate to se­vere symp­toms, you will be al­lowed to quar­an­tine at home.

This from Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr Roshan Paras­ram, who was speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health’s (MOH) press brief­ing on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Paras­ram said this is the lat­est stage of the MOH’s re­sponse to the virus, as this coun­try now has 1,177 ac­tive COVID-19 cas­es. Paras­ram said those with mod­er­ate to se­vere symp­toms will be hos­pi­talised at ei­ther the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal or the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.

Ear­li­er on Wednes­day, the MOH an­nounced that 132 more peo­ple had test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

Paras­ram said with­in the next two days, 400 peo­ple will be dis­charged from step-down fa­cil­i­ties across the coun­try, as he said the Min­istry’s dis­charge pro­ce­dure has al­so changed.

He said in­stead of need­ing one neg­a­tive COVID test to be dis­charged, pa­tients will now need to have no symp­toms for ten days plus three days be­fore be­ing dis­charged.

Up­on dis­charge, the pa­tient will be made to sign a quar­an­tine or­der, which con­fines them to their home for a fur­ther sev­en days be­fore they can re­sume their nor­mal rou­tines.

Paras­ram said af­ter these sev­en days have elapsed, the pa­tient will no longer be able to spread the virus to any­one else.