Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is re­as­sur­ing the pub­lic that they will not be en­dan­gered in any way by the op­er­a­tions of step-down fa­cil­i­ties or hold­ing bays cur­rent­ly be­ing set up across the coun­try to house pa­tients re­cov­er­ing from COVID-19 be­fore they are dis­charged from the State’s care.

The as­sur­ance came hours af­ter it was re­vealed that 17 asymp­to­matic pa­tients in the con­va­les­cent phase had been de­cant­ed from the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal to the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal on Fri­day night. It is be­lieved this will be a tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion be­fore they are moved from Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal to a step-down fa­cil­i­ty at Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment, San­gre Grande.

On Fri­day night, res­i­dents liv­ing close to the prop­er­ty, which was pre­vi­ous­ly used as an old-aged home, protest­ed the im­pend­ing ar­rival of the com­mu­ni­ty’s newest ad­di­tions as they ar­gued their lives would be placed in dan­ger.

An­gry res­i­dents claimed while they were no­ti­fied be­fore and pam­phlets with in­for­ma­tion on COVID-19 had been dis­trib­uted through­out the com­mu­ni­ty, they had not been al­lowed to voice their con­cerns.

But dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence to up­date the coun­try on COVID-19 mat­ters, Deyals­ingh im­plored res­i­dents to demon­strate un­der­stand­ing and com­pas­sion for their fel­low­men dur­ing this time.

Turn­ing to the na­tion­al watch-words of Dis­ci­pline, Pro­duc­tion and Tol­er­ance for in­spi­ra­tion, he said: “If we live by those watch­words, we are try­ing to treat cit­i­zens of T&T. These are peo­ple in their time of need. They are look­ing to com­mu­ni­ties to treat them hu­mane­ly and with re­spect. I would like to think that we could rise to the oc­ca­sion.

“The peo­ple who have COVID-19 did not bring it up­on them­selves and we have to be com­pas­sion­ate at this time, as I know we can. We have to be our broth­ers’ keep­er, as I know we can.”

Deyals­ingh said fa­cil­i­ties to be used will of­fer acreage as a buffer to the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty and that the pa­tients will be kept se­cure and not al­lowed to min­gle with those on the out­side.

He re­vealed that all se­lect­ed fa­cil­i­ties will be screened based on suit­abil­i­ty for both the pa­tients and the com­mu­ni­ty to en­sure no one is put at risk.

He said the gen­er­al guide­line is that “there must a cer­tain amount of spa­tial arrange­ment so mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty are as far away as pos­si­ble.”

“It must have sleep­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions. These are not hos­pi­tals, these are what you would call hold­ing bays, as we did in Ba­lan­dra,” Deyals­ingh said in ref­er­ence to the Camp Ba­lan­dra site where the 68 na­tion­als who re­turned from an ill-fat­ed Caribbean cruise were housed when they re­turned home on March 18.

Deyals­ingh said the cost for each fa­cil­i­ty will vary and al­most three weeks af­ter the 68 cruise pas­sen­gers were quar­an­tined in Ba­lan­dra, he said the use of that fa­cil­i­ty was cost­ing the Gov­ern­ment $85,000 per month. How­ev­er, he was quick to note that while there were pay­ing for some of the fa­cil­i­ties, some are be­ing of­fered to them free of charge.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram as­sured res­i­dents that pa­tients placed at Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment will not pose a risk to them.

He ex­plained that care­ful ef­forts are made to se­lect step-down fa­cil­i­ties based on their ge­o­graph­i­cal and phys­i­cal lay­outs, which must re­sem­ble a dor­mi­to­ry styling that can sleep a num­ber of peo­ple sep­a­rate and apart, as re­cov­er­ing pa­tients need a cer­tain de­gree of iso­la­tion be­fore be­ing dis­charged.

Paras­ram said: “When we choose an area to have pa­tients with COVID-19 as a quar­an­tine site, there is no risk of spread to any mem­ber of the pop­u­la­tion in that ju­ris­dic­tion.

“We go to lengths to en­sure that the site is so laid out that there’s a cer­tain dis­tance be­tween the edge of the prop­er­ty and even the dwellings with­in so that there can be no spread.”

He as­sured that se­lect­ed sites would en­sure pro­tec­tion for both those on the in­side and out­side.

Paras­ram agreed that the geri­atric pop­u­la­tion was more at risk, as mor­tal­i­ty sta­tis­tics out of Italy and Chi­na showed the great­est risk of death was in per­sons 60 years and over.

As co-mor­bid con­di­tions such as di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion are fac­tored in, Paras­ram said most of the peo­ple 60 years would have hy­per­ten­sion, di­a­betes or some oth­er ill­ness, which in­creas­es the risk of death.

Dur­ing the brief­ing, Deyals­ingh urged the pub­lic to stay home and stay safe as he not­ed the alarm­ing rates at which glob­al cas­es and deaths were be­ing record­ed. He de­scribed world­wide sta­tis­tics which crossed one mil­lion cas­es on Fri­day, as grim.

In a bid to shock the lo­cal pop­u­lace, he warned, “No place on earth, no mat­ter how re­mote or un­der­pop­u­lat­ed, can es­cape this virus.”

Re­fer­ring to the re­mote South At­lantic arch­i­pel­ago--the Falk­land Is­lands off the coast of Ar­genti­na--Deyals­ingh said they had just record­ed their first case.

Mean­while, the num­ber of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es in T&T con­tin­ues to in­crease dai­ly. Up to 4 pm yes­ter­day, a to­tal of 103 cas­es had been record­ed.

Pro­vid­ing a break­down of the sta­tis­tics, Paras­ram said the num­ber of pa­tients hos­pi­talised now stood at 93.

This in­clud­ed one pa­tient at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal ICU who is on a ven­ti­la­tor; 26 am­bu­la­to­ry pa­tients at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, who were said to be in a very good state and 66 pa­tients at Cou­va Hos­pi­tal--of which two are in the ICU, with one on a ven­ti­la­tor; 11 in the HDU and 53 am­bu­la­to­ry cas­es.

The deaths re­mained at six up to last evening, with one pa­tient dis­charged.

Ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic on the use of masks, Paras­ram said the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) on­ly this week ad­vised peo­ple to use cloth-like or home-made masks in every set­ting and for N95 and sur­gi­cal masks to be used by med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers on­ly.

Deyals­ingh al­so re­vealed that work per­mits for the in­com­ing batch of Cuban nurs­es have been ap­proved and health of­fi­cials are work­ing with Caribbean Air­lines to or­gan­ise a flight to bring them in by the mid­dle of next week.