PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher

@guardian.co.tt

At 2.45 pm yes­ter­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go joined the list of over 150 coun­tries across the world with a con­firmed case of the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19).

“This case, it should be not­ed, is an im­port­ed case, it’s a 52-year-old male who flew in­to the coun­try from Switzer­land on Mon­day 9th of March. That is this Mon­day. It is worth­while to note that since Mon­day, this per­son has been in self-iso­la­tion,” Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the min­istry’s Park Street, Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters yes­ter­day. “The per­son would have con­tact­ed his health care pro­fes­sion­al on Wednes­day 11th, which is yes­ter­day. The nec­es­sary swabs were tak­en and CARPHA to­day at 2.45 pm con­tact­ed me and said we have our first con­firmed case of COVID-19.”

He added, “The fam­i­ly has been in iso­la­tion since we were alert­ed since Wednes­day the 11th. Con­tact trac­ing be­gan on Wednes­day, al­ready be­gun, un­der the pro­to­cols that we use for tu­ber­cu­lo­sis.”

Deyals­ingh said Dr Michelle Trot­man, of the Cau­ra hos­pi­tal, would be con­duct­ing the task of con­tact trac­ing, which is the process of try­ing to re­trace the pa­tient’s steps and see­ing whom he may have come in­to con­tact with since his ar­rival.

“It is a mild case so now arrange­ments are be­ing made to have the pa­tient trans­ferred from his home via suit­ably equipped am­bu­lance ser­vices with all PPE to the Cau­ra fa­cil­i­ty, as it is a mild case,” Deyals­ingh said.

Deyals­ingh al­so urged the pub­lic not to pan­ic fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the first COVID-19 case here.

Switzer­land cur­rent­ly has over 650 COVID-19 cas­es, al­most twice the amount record­ed on Mon­day when the man, who is said to re­side in Val­sayn, ar­rived in Trinidad.

Switzer­land has no di­rect flight to Trinidad and of­ten mul­ti­ple con­nect­ing flights have to be tak­en to get from the Eu­ro­pean na­tion to these shores. The cost com­mon con­nect­ing flights are from Lon­don and Mi­a­mi.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young con­firmed that con­tact trac­ing was be­ing done.

“The pro­to­cols have been im­ple­ment­ed, the (con­tact) trac­ing is tak­ing place,” said Young.

“The good news, from what I un­der­stand from our health ex­perts, hav­ing sat with them for the last 45 min­utes, is in this case, there was pret­ty much im­me­di­ate iso­la­tion.”

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram con­firmed that peo­ple who were aboard the flight the man ar­rived on were al­so con­tact­ed and may be sub­ject to quar­an­tine.

“The im­me­di­ate con­tacts on the air­plane, we are get­ting to­geth­er a list of all the per­sons and they will be con­tact­ed in very short or­der and iso­lat­ed and or quar­an­tined as the need aris­es,” Paras­ram said.

The CMO al­so con­firmed that the man was test­ed at the Pi­ar­co Air­port but showed up as nor­mal on their scan­ners.

Paras­ram mean­while said 51 peo­ple had been test­ed for the virus, with the soli­tary case re­turn­ing pos­i­tive. He said there were no pend­ing tests as of yes­ter­day evening.

Fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the COVID-19 case, the Maria Regi­na Grade School ad­vised par­ents that the school would be closed for one week af­ter a par­ent of one of their stu­dents test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus. The school is set to be sani­tised and a fur­ther ad­vi­so­ry will be is­sued to par­ents next week, the school said in a re­lease to par­ent/guardians.

School prin­ci­pal Eliz­a­beth Crouch said class­es for SEA stu­dents will be con­duct­ed on­line.

Maple Leaf In­ter­na­tion­al School prin­ci­pal Richard Rozario al­so is­sued an ad­vi­so­ry to par­ents and guardians yes­ter­day, as one of their em­ploy­ees was the spouse of one of the pi­lots on the flight that took the Guyana vic­tim to the Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. Not­ing that the pi­lot had been asked by health of­fi­cials to self-quar­an­tine him­self, Rozario said he would meet with the board to de­cide on an ac­tion plan and up­date the par­ent/guardian body there­after.