Trinidad and To­ba­go’s COVID-19 cas­es are rolling faster.

The num­ber of cas­es in­creased by six in the space of one day—go­ing from 51 on Mon­day to 53 by mid­day yes­ter­day and 57 by 4 pm on Tues­day.

The lat­est num­bers an­nounced by the Health Min­istry yes­ter­day in­clud­ed T&T’s first case of a per­son who was a pri­ma­ry con­tact of—and was in close prox­im­i­ty to —a rel­a­tive who re­cent­ly trav­elled abroad. The rel­a­tive was an im­port­ed COVID case.

The cas­es al­so in­clude two more peo­ple who’d been on the same Caribbean cruise from which 68 oth­er na­tion­als re­cent­ly re­turned. The cur­rent two re­turned sep­a­rate­ly from the 68.

And an im­port­ed case who ar­rived in To­ba­go from the Unit­ed King­dom was trans­ferred to Trinidad on Tues­day.

With Tues­day’s news, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the on­ly move­ment in T&T now “... has to be to stay at home. Es­pe­cial­ly those 20,000 peo­ple (who re­cent­ly re­turned from over­seas), if you stay home, we can pre­vent com­mu­ni­ty spread.”

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who al­so ap­pealed to peo­ple to heed the Gov­ern­ment’s rec­om­men­da­tions, said a state of emer­gency wasn’t on the ta­ble at this time.

T&T ini­tial­ly had nine im­port­ed cas­es. This jumped last week­end with 41 cas­es from the 68-mem­ber group who’d gone on a Caribbean cruise where oth­er pas­sen­gers came down with the virus on the ship. Gov­ern­ment’s not­ed cruis­es, in­ter­na­tion­al air­ports and re­sorts were key points for pos­si­ble in­fec­tion.

On Tues­day, the Health Min­istry’s 4 pm bul­letin stat­ed that the num­ber of sam­ples sent to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency for test­ing was 353 and of these 57 were pos­i­tive. The sam­ple num­ber had been 332 at mid­day yes­ter­day.

Apart from the ear­li­er 53 cas­es, the min­istry stat­ed four ad­di­tion­al peo­ple test­ed pos­i­tive. One had a his­to­ry of re­cent trav­el. An­oth­er was known to have had con­tact with a per­son with a his­to­ry of re­cent trav­el. Cas­es three and four were the two ad­di­tion­al na­tion­als who were part of the Caribbean cruise from which the 68 oth­ers re­turned last Wednes­day. Forty-one of the 68 are now hos­pi­talised with the virus.

Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram, who spoke at a mid­day me­dia brief­ing Tues­day—pri­or to the 4 pm bul­letin—ex­plained that the case which had con­tact with a per­son who had re­cent trav­el his­to­ry didn’t con­sti­tute “com­mu­ni­ty spread.” They said this was so since the per­son who got the virus was a pri­ma­ry con­tact of the per­son in their house­hold who’d trav­elled and was an im­port­ed COVID case.

The Health Min­istry had stat­ed that the per­son with a his­to­ry of re­cent trav­el was iso­lat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly up­on dis­em­bark­ing a British Air­ways air­craft at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. They were be­ing treat­ed in iso­la­tion in Scar­bor­ough.

Deyals­ingh said af­ter land­ing, the per­son was im­me­di­ate­ly quar­an­tined at the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal where they dis­played COVID symp­toms. Tests were done and the case was con­firmed.

Deyals­ingh said ac­cord­ing to pro­to­cols for To­ba­go re­vealed by the CMO at a re­cent Par­lia­men­tary meet­ing, the pa­tient was trans­ferred by the T&T Coast Guard—in iso­la­tion mode—to Trinidad. They were lat­er trans­ferred to ei­ther the Cau­ra or Cou­va Hos­pi­tal de­pend­ing on symp­toms, whether mild, mod­er­ate or se­vere.

The CMO re­cent­ly said To­ba­go didn’t want COVID cas­es kept there for fear of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal and it was agreed any case would have been sent to Trinidad via boat.

Deyals­ingh said, “This sit­u­a­tion isn’t a joke, this is the great­est med­ical chal­lenge of this gen­er­a­tion and prob­a­bly the last few, and the pub­lic can help by do­ing a sim­ple thing—stay home.

“You have UK au­thor­i­ties telling their res­i­dents to stay home and the NY may­or al­so speak­ing about the is­sue.”

Tues­day’s six ad­di­tion­al cas­es showed faster pace, in­clud­ing of de­tec­tion. Pri­or to that, cas­es had emerged at about two dai­ly.

Min­istry epi­demi­ol­o­gy head Dr Av­ery Hinds stressed trans­mis­sion can be “eas­i­ly am­pli­fied if peo­ple don’t stay home and lim­it gath­er­ings.