Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, has con­firmed that Trinidad and To­ba­go has op­er­a­tionalised its Na­tion­al Pan­dem­ic Pre­pared­ness Plan, to en­sure the coun­try’s readi­ness to deal with the nov­el coro­n­avirus, COVID-19.

He was speak­ing on CNC3's THE MORN­ING BREW show to­day.

Point­ing out that it is not a mat­ter of “if” but “when” the virus hits our shores, the health min­is­ter re­ports that Cab­i­net has set up a Na­tion­al Stand­ing Com­mit­tee, head­ed by the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, and which com­pris­es all gov­ern­ment min­istries and agen­cies nec­es­sary to the coun­try’s pre­pared­ness ef­forts, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from:

• Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice;

• Cus­toms and Im­mi­gra­tion

• The Min­istries of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Ed­u­ca­tion, and Labour;

• To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA);

• To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (TEMA)

The Com­mit­tee will ad­vise the min­is­ters of Health and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on what should be done on a na­tion­al lev­el for both COVID-19, as well as any oth­er in­fec­tious dis­ease which may oc­cur in the fu­ture.

Its first meet­ing will be on Thurs­day 5th March 2020.

“We have op­er­a­tionalised that Com­mit­tee,” Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh con­firms. “There was an Ad Hoc Com­mit­tee set up for Ebo­la back in 2014. That was a good les­son in pre­pared­ness, and now we have tak­en that one step fur­ther by set­ting up this Na­tion­al Stand­ing Com­mit­tee that is go­ing to be there all the time, spear­head­ing na­tion­al re­sponse plans.”

The health min­is­ter notes that not every­one who con­tracts COVID-19 will need to be iso­lat­ed in In­ten­sive Care Units (ICUs), since 81 per­cent of cas­es will be mild, and an­oth­er 14 per­cent can be quar­an­tined at home.

He says there will be beds for the es­ti­mat­ed five per­cent of cas­es need­ing in­ten­sive care treat­ment.

Facilities at Caura Hospital, St James Medical Complex, Port of Spain General Hospital and Couva Children's Hospital & Diagnostic Centre, have been earmarked to handle a potential national outbreak of COVID-19 in T&T

GUARDIAN

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, some 25 beds will be avail­able at Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, and an­oth­er 67 beds at a new health fa­cil­i­ty in St James with­in rough­ly two weeks. In ad­di­tion, he says an­oth­er 70-odd beds will be avail­able at a new block at the Port of Spain Hos­pi­tal—the old COSTATT Build­ing—which was de­signed to in­clude iso­la­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

He says in the event of a na­tion­al out­break, the fa­cil­i­ties at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal will be co-opt­ed—that’s an ad­di­tion­al 230 beds, with ICU ca­pac­i­ty—leav­ing the ICUs at oth­er hos­pi­tals in the health care sys­tem free to deal with oth­er kinds of emer­gen­cies.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh ex­plains that the treat­ment sys­tem for COVID-19 will run par­al­lel to the reg­u­lar health sys­tem:

“I am plan­ning to have a par­al­lel sys­tem—one deal­ing with COVID-19 and the nor­mal health care sys­tem run­ning as usu­al—so our pa­tients aren’t bumped off. They get their nor­mal ser­vice.”