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Saturday, February 15, 2025

Leaks of COVID case info to media upsets Parasram

by

Peter Christopher
1787 days ago
20200326
Chief Medical Officer Dr. Roshan Parasram

Chief Medical Officer Dr. Roshan Parasram

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram is up­set that pa­tient in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to this coun­try's first COVID-19 death, as well as na­tion­als who are on a self-quar­an­tine mon­i­tor­ing list giv­en to the po­lice, emerged on so­cial me­dia.

Dur­ing Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, Paras­ram said re­it­er­at­ed that shar­ing such in­for­ma­tion con­sti­tut­ed a breach of pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

"The in­for­ma­tion that you have, you should not have had in the first place. The in­for­ma­tion that you have is cir­cu­lat­ing from some­one's pri­vate notes that was sent out through Face­book. It is a breach of pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

"I have al­ready spo­ken to the CEO to find out how that breach oc­curred. It should not be in the pub­lic do­main, that is too much in­for­ma­tion," Paras­ram said as he de­fend­ed the long time pe­ri­od be­tween the pa­tient's of­fi­cial time of death and the even­tu­al pub­lic an­nounce­ment of his pass­ing by the Min­istry of Health.

"Our pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure is that the fam­i­ly, the rel­a­tives have to be in­formed first," he said.

"When this oc­curred, we would have tak­en all the nec­es­sary steps to com­mu­ni­cate with fam­i­ly. Some of the rel­a­tives are abroad and I don't want to say too much about it to let out in­for­ma­tion."

Pri­or to the min­istry's an­nounce­ment of 77-year-old US na­tion­al Hansel Leon's death, the in­for­ma­tion had al­ready been cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, while Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued a state­ment con­firm­ing the death hours be­fore the min­istry's re­lease.

Again asked if he did not feel feel the pub­lic should have been no­ti­fied of the death giv­en that it was crit­i­cal to get peo­ple the vic­tim may have come in­to con­tact with in­to quar­an­tine, Paras­ram said, "We have to en­sure that the fam­i­ly are well in­formed pri­or to do­ing any­thing in the press. Rel­a­tives are in­formed and com­fort­able first be­fore we send any­thing out."

He stressed that min­istry of­fi­cials were mere­ly fol­low­ing pro­ce­dure.

"She (Dr. Michelle Trot­man) fol­lowed the process, we both fol­lowed the process. I don't know how the in­for­ma­tion would have leaked out, I sup­posed just like every­thing else pri­or to that. But we have to fol­low our process."

Asked if the de­ceased was an im­port­ed or lo­cal trans­mis­sion case, based on the fact that the leaked pa­tient note stat­ed the man ar­rived in Trinidad in Feb­ru­ary, Paras­ram stuck with the prog­no­sis that his case was im­port­ed.

"We have said some­thing is im­port­ed or not, based on the notes from the ac­tu­al doc­tor that saw them. I don't know what this is what is cir­cu­lat­ing. I have not looked at it in de­tail," he said.

Paras­ram was then asked by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ki­eth Row­ley if the in­cu­ba­tion pe­ri­od for the virus of 14 days was de­fin­i­tive.

"It is not (de­fin­i­tive) and the re­search out of Chi­na even has in­di­cat­ed that there are out­liers in all of this," the CMO said.

"All of us have been work­ing with 14 days and we are hop­ing to God that it is right. There has been shown viremic pa­tients up to 42 days in the re­search, some as far as be­yond 42 days, doc­u­ment­ed 21 days and car­ry­ing vi­ral ill­ness."

He said de­spite this in­stance, he still felt the cur­rent sys­tem of two dai­ly press re­leas­es for COVID-19 up­dates was suf­fi­cient.

Ad­dress­ing an­oth­er so­cial me­dia leak of the list of na­tion­als who re­cent­ly re­turned home and had been or­dered to self-iso­late, he said, "We have a list, as I said be­fore, that is not cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia that we shared to the po­lice and there are four pages of lists with per­sons that came in­to this coun­try with ad­dress­es and phone num­bers that are cir­cu­lat­ing around the me­dia freely, that we meant to send straight from our Port Health de­part­ment to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice. And as of last night (Wednes­day), it is cir­cu­lat­ing through­out the me­dia," the CMO said.

"And that is to be used by the po­lice ser­vice, to call those per­sons let­ting them know to stay and if they don't stay home the full im­pact of the Quar­an­tine Act will be put in place. So again, I don't know how it is out there but again it is so­cial me­dia be­ing mis­chie­vous."

How­ev­er, he said the Gov­ern­ment's or­der for all non-es­sen­tial ac­tiv­i­ty to cease on Sun­day be­came nec­es­sary af­ter re­cent cas­es of per­sons not self-iso­lat­ing up­on re­turn from a for­eign coun­try, in­clud­ing TV per­son­al­i­ty Ian Al­leyne.

"So I sup­pose that case that was high­light­ed in the me­dia shows us what not to do. And that is what we are fight­ing against and I think the de­ci­sions tak­en to­day are re­al­ly to fight against that one par­tic­u­lar case, or per­sons do­ing ex­act­ly the same thing," he said while again not nam­ing the per­son­al­i­ty di­rect­ly.

"So what we try­ing to do is try­ing to re­strict the move­ment of per­sons in Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause af­ter say­ing many times that peo­ple should stay at home, ob­vi­ous­ly the call has not been heed­ed."

COVID-19


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