KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics Lim­it­ed was forced to shut down two of its Port-of-Spain out­lets for sani­ti­sa­tion yes­ter­day af­ter the Min­istry of Health con­firmed that some­one liv­ing in the house­hold of one of T&T’s lat­est COVID-19 cas­es vis­it­ed the out­lets.

The clo­sure of the out­lets at Char­lotte Street and Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, St James, cre­at­ed a scare in the cap­i­tal and na­tion­wide as the pos­i­tive pa­tient, a woman who is one of four new cas­es re­port­ed over the last 48 hours, is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed as a pos­si­ble com­mu­ni­ty spread case. The min­istry had al­so ini­tial­ly in­struct­ed First Cit­i­zens’ San Juan branch to close yes­ter­day but lat­er found out that the per­son who came in­to con­tact with the pos­i­tive case on­ly used the ATM out­side.

Speak­ing dur­ing the min­istry’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said they were now in­ves­ti­gat­ing the source of in­fec­tion for the woman, who is Case 139, as she has no re­cent trav­el his­to­ry. Paras­ram did not give de­tails of the gen­der or age of the pa­tient, who was an­nounced as one of two cas­es on Tues­day. Rather, he said the pa­tient was sick for a week but con­tin­ued to move around in pub­lic and was now un­der quar­an­tine at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal in Tu­na­puna. He said it was the first case of lo­cal trans­mis­sion in two and a half months. The oth­er two con­firmed cas­es re­cent­ly re­turned from Cana­da and Sau­di Ara­bia and at 6 pm yes­ter­day, the min­istry an­nounced that the fourth con­firmed case of the lat­est batch was still un­der epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Up to late yes­ter­day, there were five peo­ple re­ceiv­ing treat­ment at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal in Tu­na­puna.

“There is no overt or open link to re­cent air trav­el, so it is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Of course, as soon as that in­ves­ti­ga­tion cul­mi­nates, we will have a bet­ter idea of what the source of that in­fec­tions is,” Paras­ram said.
“They would have func­tioned as nor­mal, moved about the com­mu­ni­ty and gone to dif­fer­ent places. In the house­hold it­self, there would have been up­wards of eight per­sons vis­it­ing or re­sid­ing in that par­tic­u­lar house­hold, so those per­sons who vis­it or live in that house­hold be­come pri­ma­ry con­tacts of the case.”
In a state­ment last evening, how­ev­er, Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics said it was giv­en the all-clear to re­open by the min­istry af­ter the per­son who vis­it­ed the stores test­ed neg­a­tive for the virus.

“Thanks for the con­cern shared to our staff via mes­sages and calls. The Min­istry of Health has just giv­en us the news that the swabs from the con­tact that vis­it­ed our lo­ca­tions came back as neg­a­tive for COVID-19. This means that all our branch­es have been giv­en the clear­ance to open as usu­al to­mor­row (to­day) but out of an abun­dance of cau­tion they are be­ing thor­ough­ly sani­tised this evening (yes­ter­day),” the com­pa­ny stat­ed.

Cus­tomers who went to the Char­lotte Street and Long Cir­cu­lar Mall out­lets yes­ter­day met closed doors.

“What is go­ing on here?” one woman asked.

“Yeah! Closed for the day. Just to­day alone,” the se­cu­ri­ty guard replied at the Char­lotte Street out­let.

The scene was sim­i­lar at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall where many cus­tomers in­quired why the store was closed but got no rea­son. Guardian Me­dia was told that close to 25 staff mem­bers were in­side the Charo­lette Street out­let, in­clud­ing some who were off du­ty but worked on Tues­day. They were called out for test­ing. Rel­a­tives of em­ploy­ees stuck in­side came by the doors to vis­it their loved ones but were un­able to meet them.

In an ear­li­er post, the com­pa­ny said the min­istry said in trac­ing the con­firmed COVID-19 case, it learned the pa­tient vis­it­ed two of its out­lets, as well as sev­er­al oth­er busi­ness places. Pen­ny­wise said Dr Av­ery Hinds, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion, had in­di­cat­ed there was a rel­a­tive­ly low risk that any­one at the branch got in­fect­ed but the min­istry was tak­ing all pre­cau­tions.
Paras­ram said the min­istry would list all staff and test as nec­es­sary, pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary con­tacts of the pa­tient. While the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion takes place, he said there might be fur­ther clo­sures for sani­ti­sa­tion and line list­ing of con­tacts.

“Re­mem­ber­ing this is the first case we have had of this na­ture for over 80 days, and we want to en­sure there is no fur­ther spread, and we are able to iden­ti­fy ex­act­ly where this case came from, which will take a few days of in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as well as test­ing, be­fore we can make a de­fin­i­tive state­ment as to whether we think it has come be­cause of con­tact with some­one that may have trav­elled or pos­si­ble con­tact with a health­care work­er,” he said. 
“But we need to do the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and com­plete it be­fore we can say de­fin­i­tive­ly, what is the source of this par­tic­u­lar case: whether it is the pri­ma­ry or is it linked to an­oth­er case that we may find along the way.”

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said he gave FCB CEO Karen Dar­basie the con­tact’s name and the bank was able to track the per­son’s ac­tiv­i­ty at the bank. 

In a re­lease, FCB head of Brand and Mar­ket­ing Lar­ry Olton said the San Juan branch’s op­er­a­tion was not in­ter­rupt­ed. He con­firmed the pa­tient used the ATM but not­ed the ma­chine and room are thor­ough­ly sani­tised.

“As such, the staff at the San Juan branch would not have been ex­posed to the risk of con­tract­ing the virus from the said cus­tomer at the branch and the branch and ATM ser­vices re­main open for busi­ness,” Olton said.

Deyals­ingh not­ed that Case 139 un­der­scores the im­por­tance of peo­ple ad­her­ing to pub­lic health mea­sures. How­ev­er, he said the min­istry is not con­sid­er­ing re­vert­ing to pre­vi­ous COVID-19 mea­sures as it was weigh­ing the eco­nom­ic im­pact.