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."