Carisa Lee

A po­lice of­fi­cer sta­tioned at River­side Plaza in Port-of Spain and her sis­ter, who works in the fi­nance de­part­ment of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

The de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day forced Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith to shut down both the River­side Plaza, where the of­fi­cer op­er­ates and the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, where the of­fi­cer's sis­ter, a civil­ian, works, to al­low the build­ings to be sani­tised. Grif­fith al­so closed the firearms sec­tion of the TTPS to the pub­lic with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Con­fir­ma­tion of the of­fi­cer's sta­tus came yes­ter­day from Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son, who said the of­fi­cer had done the test since last Thurs­day but they on­ly got con­fir­ma­tion yes­ter­day.

"The in­for­ma­tion was slow in com­ing. Now that it has ar­rived we have to act on it," Dick­son said.

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived at River­side Plaza yes­ter­day, sev­er­al of­fi­cers were seen evac­u­at­ing the build­ing and those en­ter­ing were dressed in full Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment.

"Of­fi­cers are anx­ious," Dick­son said.

Dick­son said close to 400 of­fi­cers work in River­side Plaza be­tween floors three to 16. The work­spaces were sani­tised yes­ter­day and the of­fi­cers are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to work to­day, he said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the of­fi­cer works in the Court and Records sec­tion. Dick­son said they are cur­rent­ly com­pil­ing a con­tact trac­ing list and those who worked with the of­fi­cer will be test­ed for COVID-19. The same pro­ce­dure will be done for her sib­ling.

Dick­son called on his col­leagues and the pub­lic to con­tin­ue to pro­tect them­selves by fol­low­ing the COVID guide­lines.

"COVID is not be­yond us ... We could even be along the road of the sec­ond wave," he said.

The sit­u­a­tion again caused con­cern about the lo­cal spread of the virus in what is now be­ing deemed a pos­si­ble sec­ond wave.

In the last 24-hours, this coun­try record­ed six new COVID-19 cas­es and there have been 15 new cas­es in the past week, tak­ing the to­tal num­ber of cas­es to 154.

This was al­so not the first time build­ings had to be shut down and staff evac­u­at­ed due to a COVID scare.

Last Wednes­day, Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics Ltd's branch­es on Char­lotte Street and at the Long Cir­cu­lar Mall and the Ramish and Leela Su­per­mar­ket in San Juan were forced to close af­ter the pri­ma­ry con­tact of a COVID19 pa­tient vis­it­ed the busi­ness­es. The fol­low­ing day Re­pub­lic Bank's West Mall branch was closed af­ter the child of an em­ploy­ee test­ed pos­i­tive.

Mar­aval RC was al­so closed for sani­ti­sa­tion last week af­ter a SEA pupil test­ed pos­i­tive. That forced the school to be shut down and all of the boy's class­mates and teach­ers to be sent in­to self-quar­an­tine. And on Mon­day, stu­dents at the Tacarigua Pres­by­ter­ian school al­so had to un­der­go a sim­i­lar ex­er­cise af­ter the par­ent of a stu­dent there test­ed pos­i­tive. That adult's pos­i­tive test al­so forced the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to be closed for sani­ti­sa­tion.

Fol­low­ing the shut­down of the TTPS build­ings yes­ter­day morn­ing, the St Au­gus­tine South Gov­ern­ment School was al­so closed af­ter a SEA stu­dent was ex­posed to one of the pos­i­tive cas­es.