As the num­ber of con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ues to de­crease, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram has ad­mit­ted that very few peo­ple are go­ing to pub­lic health cen­tres and emer­gency de­part­ments to get test­ed for the virus.

Giv­ing an up­date on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic at yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health press con­fer­ence, Paras­ram said this was what they had picked up re­cent­ly.

Asked if cit­i­zens dis­play­ing flu-like symp­toms had been show­ing up at health cen­tres and emer­gency de­part­ments to be test­ed for the virus as the min­istry seeks to ramp up test­ing, Paras­ram said the num­ber of peo­ple at­tend­ing the health care set­tings had de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the last two weeks.

“About a week ago, we no­ticed 67 per­sons com­ing out for acute vi­ral ill­ness for the en­tire coun­try...in one week. Which is less than ten per day.”

Paras­ram said they had al­so no­ticed a sig­nif­i­cant drop in pa­tients seek­ing treat­ment for low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tract in­fec­tions, gas­troen­teri­tis and com­mon colds at pub­lic hos­pi­tals. These, he said, were some of the pos­i­tive spin-offs from peo­ple prac­tic­ing prop­er hy­giene, eat­ing health­i­er and stay­ing in­doors.

The CMO al­so gave an up­date on the 33 na­tion­als who re­turned from Bar­ba­dos and were placed in quar­an­tine at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua.

He said the group had showed no symp­toms of the virus and were re-swabbed by health care work­ers on Sun­day. Once the re­sults come back neg­a­tive, Paras­ram said they would be dis­charged to­day.

Paras­ram said the group of 69 peo­ple who re­turned from Suri­name last Fri­day and were placed in quar­an­tine at the UWI cam­pus in Debe were al­so swabbed on their sec­ond day.

Paras­ram al­so said while there were re­ports of two strains of the virus in some for­eign coun­tries, T&T did not have the ca­pac­i­ty to de­ter­mine how many strains we have.

In the fu­ture, he said “we can send sam­ples to CDC for sub-typ­ing but with our case­load be­ing so low it may not be nec­es­sary.”

He al­so said when­ev­er the bor­ders are even­tu­al­ly re­opened on a phased ba­sis, he ex­pects self-quar­an­tine will be ap­plied for na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als de­pend­ing on the coun­try they come from to avoid min­gling. State quar­an­tine will al­so ap­ply for a trav­eller if they are deemed high risk.