The two pa­tients con­firmed with COVID-19 re­main iso­lat­ed at sep­a­rate hos­pi­tals.

Up to late Sat­ur­day, the first pa­tient was said to be at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal while the sec­ond was at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.

Pro­vid­ing very lit­tle in­for­ma­tion about their con­di­tion dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of Health on Sat­ur­day, Tho­racic Med­ical Di­rec­tor, Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, Dr Michelle Trot­man re­vealed, "The pa­tient at Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal has been im­prov­ing and we ex­pect a re­cov­ery with­in the time frame which can range—with COVID-19—to sev­en, ten, 14, 21 days plus de­pend­ing on the par­tic­u­lar sce­nario, but we do ex­pect a re­cov­ery for him."

Re­gard­ing the sec­ond pa­tient, Trot­man said, "The pa­tient that is at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal is more se­ri­ous­ly ill. The good news is that com­pared yes­ter­day (Fri­day) to to­day (Sat­ur­day), that pa­tient even though crit­i­cal­ly ill is im­prov­ing."

Ex­plain­ing how the virus can en­ter in­to your body, she urged peo­ple to be par­tic­u­lar­ly care­ful when touch­ing their faces es­pe­cial­ly their mouths, nose and eyes as the virus at­tach­es it­self to an in­di­vid­ual’s mu­cous mem­branes.

She ad­vised, "If the virus can­not get in­to your body, it can­not be­come a dis­ease. The num­ber one way to pre­vent that is to wash your hands and sani­tise."

Trot­man said the pub­lic has been thrust in­to a sud­den cul­ture shock where they are no longer free to shake hands, touch, hug or kiss.

She said while many peo­ple can con­tract COVID-19 and not even know it, there were seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion that were more vul­ner­a­ble. Among those are the el­der­ly and oth­ers suf­fer­ing with di­a­betes, can­cer, re­nal dis­ease, and HIV/Aids..

Trot­man as­sured, "Eighty per cent of us will get bet­ter and those that will not get bet­ter are the peo­ple who have some rea­son why they won’t get bet­ter. We al­ready know who to look for.

"Not every snif­fle, not every cough is COVID-19. It is most like­ly the flu."

In­di­cat­ing this was a mild dis­ease from which most peo­ple would re­cov­er, Trot­man said per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was key in en­sur­ing the virus was not spread.

Re­gard­ing self-quar­an­tine, she said it meant stay­ing in­doors and away from oth­ers for 14 days.

Grif­fith to self-iso­late, PM ex­er­cis­ing so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young en­dorsed the call by Trot­man for re­turn­ing na­tion­als to act re­spon­si­bly and self-quar­an­tine.

On the is­sue of con­tact trac­ing, he said the au­thor­i­ties were cur­rent­ly en­gaged in this process.

Young con­firmed that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith had been abroad for some time and an­nounced his in­ten­tion to self-iso­late for the pre­scribed time, while Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley who re­cent­ly re­turned from Ghana, has re­duced his work­load and was ex­er­cis­ing his so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Min­is­ter: No risk of run­ning out of test kits

Deyals­ingh said test­ing for the virus was be­ing done for T&T by the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), which al­so tests for oth­er Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries.

He as­sured, "CARPHA has enough test kits for its cur­rent use and the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer has al­so reached out to PA­HO to get more tests, so right now there is no risk of T&T or any oth­er Cari­com ter­ri­to­ry that de­pends on CARPHA, to run out tests. More tests are com­ing on stream all the time."

Pressed to say how ac­cu­rate the lo­cal num­ber of con­firmed cas­es were fol­low­ing an ini­tial cor­re­spon­dence from CARPHA that mem­bers states would on­ly be al­lowed a max­i­mum of 20 sam­ples to be test­ed per week—which meant there could be sam­ples still wait­ing to be test­ed that could be pos­i­tive—Deyals­ingh said, "Those were gen­er­al guide­lines put out by CARPHA."

He said fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with se­nior CARPHA of­fi­cials Sat­ur­day, "What CARPHA is do­ing for any coun­try that has COVID-19 pa­tients, those gen­er­al guide­lines are al­tered, so we now have two cas­es, there­fore we will be hav­ing more tests done.”

The min­is­ter said CARPHA was not un­der the care and con­trol of T&T and, there­fore, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties could not dic­tate how it should op­er­ate.

He said test kits were usu­al­ly sup­plied to CARPHA by PA­HO, and he would be un­able to say how many test­ing kits are avail­able.