The Min­istry of Health is brac­ing for a rise in the num­ber of pa­tients they will have to test and pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es this week­end. Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh made the com­ment at a press con­fer­ence Friday, as he an­nounced a sec­ond death and re­vealed this week­end would be the coun­try’s tip­ping point in fight­ing this glob­al pan­dem­ic.

“We now have two deaths from COVID-19,” Deyals­ingh said.

As he gave an up­date on the virus, which claimed the lives of two el­der­ly men be­tween Wednes­day and Thurs­day, Deyals­ingh said of the 453 sam­ples test­ed by Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), 66 peo­ple had al­so test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, while one pa­tient who test­ed pos­i­tive had since been dis­charged. To be dis­charged from hos­pi­tal, Deyals­ingh said the pa­tient must be asymp­to­matic for sev­en days and has “get two neg­a­tive tests 24-hours apart.” But af­ter be­ing dis­charged, the pa­tient must al­so self- iso­late for sev­en days at home, he said.

US na­tion­al Hansel Leon was the first fa­tal­i­ty while Deyals­ingh said the sec­ond pa­tient was a T&T na­tion­al who died on Thurs­day.

“He was an el­der­ly gen­tle­man ... un­for­tu­nate­ly with pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical com­pli­ca­tions,” Deyals­ingh said, adding they were stick­ing with to their pro­to­col for an­nounc­ing deaths.

“That is, we wait for a rea­son­able time for the fam­i­ly to be in­formed...for the fam­i­ly to bring in all their doc­u­ments...the death cer­tifi­cate and so on, so it can be processed.”

De­spite the se­ri­ous­ness of the virus and pos­si­bil­i­ty of quick spread, Deyals­ingh said they re­mained of the firm view the fam­i­ly of the de­ceased should be giv­en time to grieve be­fore the death is re­leased to the pub­lic.

“These un­for­tu­nate peo­ple who have died...their fam­i­lies and friends are re­al live peo­ple...flesh and blood. So we at the min­istry have tak­en a moral and eth­i­cal stance in the way we treat with the dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the death of any COVID-19 pa­tient.”

In the min­istry’s 10 am and 4 pm dai­ly up­dates Fri­day, Deyals­ingh said they will now add deaths as a new cat­e­go­ry. He said the min­istry has al­so brought on board Dr An­tho­ny Parkin­son to man­age pa­tients at Cau­ra and Cou­va Hos­pi­tals us­ing ven­ti­la­tors.

He al­so said all elec­tive surg­eries at the na­tion’s hos­pi­tals will be put on hold and resched­uled some time in the fu­ture.

Deyals­ingh said he ex­pect­ed the surge of 19,852 na­tion­als who re­cent­ly re­turned home, pri­or to the clo­sure of T&T bor­ders and had been or­dered to self-iso­late, would be a pool to be close­ly mon­i­tored be­cause many of them came from coun­tries where the virus ex­ist­ed.

“That is where the tip­ping point is be­cause the vast ma­jor­i­ty of these 19,852 peo­ple would have come from three ma­jor coun­tries - the Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States.”

Say­ing some peo­ple have not been heed­ing this warn­ing, Deyals­ingh said we should ex­pect a sharp rise in cas­es from this week­end.

He said some 200 health care pro­fes­sion­als are on stand by to as­sist should they need them and a hot­line will al­so be es­tab­lished for health care providers to make COVID-19 re­ports.