A US cit­i­zen re­port­ed­ly va­ca­tion­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go is this coun­try’s first COVID-19 death. The man, 77, re­port­ed­ly passed away at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal around mid­day Wednesday.

The death was con­firmed via a re­lease by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh Wednes­day night, af­ter he ini­tial­ly re­fused to do so to Guardian Me­dia on two oc­ca­sions af­ter he was ap­proached for the in­for­ma­tion.

Con­tact­ed via cell phone around 6.30 pm, Deyals­ingh re­fused to com­ment but asked, “Would you like to learn that your par­ent has died in the me­dia?”

Pressed fur­ther, Deyals­ingh claimed a need to en­sure the fam­i­ly’s pri­va­cy was re­spect­ed be­fore dis­con­nect­ing the call.

Guardian Me­di­an al­so ap­proached Deyals­ingh af­ter Wednes­day’s ses­sion of Par­lia­ment af­ter 7 pm and he al­so re­fused to com­ment be­fore get­ting in­to his ve­hi­cle and de­part­ing.

Al­though Deyals­ingh de­layed con­firm­ing the death up to that time, some news sources had long done so on their of­fi­cial glob­al sta­tis­tics on cas­es and deaths. Up to 8 pm Wednes­day, the to­tal num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es glob­al­ly stood at 468,155 with the glob­al death toll at 21,180. Apart from the death, T&T al­so record­ed its 60 con­firmed case Wednes­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the man was among the first set of peo­ple in the coun­try who were di­ag­nosed with COVID-19. He was de­scribed as a “com­pli­cat­ed case” and had oth­er con­di­tion which made him sus­cep­ti­ble to get­ting the virus.

Records show the man, who vis­its the coun­try in­ter­mit­tent­ly, pre­sent­ed with symp­toms at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on March 13. The man was stay­ing with his sis­ter and niece at their San Fer­nan­do home.

Deyals­ingh’s of­fi­cial re­lease con­firm­ing the death was even­tu­al­ly is­sued at 8.10 pm.

Con­tact­ed on Wednes­day, one of the man’s rel­a­tives de­clined to speak about the death at this time and ap­pealed for the fam­i­ly’s pri­va­cy to be re­spect­ed.

Mean­while, res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty where the man was stay­ing have re­port­ed­ly ex­pressed con­cern and alarm fol­low­ing the death. Hav­ing just emerged from a 14-day quar­an­tine pe­ri­od, one man, who did not want to be named, ex­pressed un­ease as he said his fam­i­ly had been in close con­tact with the man and his fam­i­ly.

While Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials re­mained silent on the death up to late Wednes­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so pre-empt­ed them by con­firm­ing the death in a me­dia re­lease around 6 pm.

In the re­lease, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment a na­tion­wide shut­down of all non-es­sen­tial ser­vices and busi­ness­es for 14 days, in the first in­stance, fol­low­ing the trends be­ing ob­served in the wake of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“As re­spon­si­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple, it is the Op­po­si­tion’s firm be­lief that the Gov­ern­ment must take de­ci­sive and tough ac­tions to pre­serve and pro­tect the health of the cit­i­zens of our beloved na­tion.”

Re­gard­ing the na­tion’s first COVID-19 death, she said, “A COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tient at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal has died. We ex­tend our deep­est con­do­lences, and we must be cog­nizant of the se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions and con­se­quences which may fol­low.”

She al­so said the 20,000 na­tion­als who have re­turned to T&T in the last two weeks and are re­port­ed­ly in self-quar­an­tine must be mon­i­tored close­ly.

“This re­quires that the State iden­ti­fies these per­sons and en­sure that they self-iso­late. Glob­al­ly, the coun­tries which have tak­en ear­ly, pre-emp­tive and de­ci­sive ac­tions have proven to be those coun­tries which have most ef­fec­tive­ly con­tained the rapid spread of the virus,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“The Gov­ern­ment has recog­nised that moral sua­sion has not had the de­sired ef­fect, and in spite of re­peat­ed calls for good sense to pre­vail, it is clear that some have not lis­tened.

“The key to get­ting ahead of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic is ear­ly de­ci­sive ac­tion, which con­tains the dis­ease be­fore it can over­whelm the pub­lic health sys­tem.”

She added, “We can­not af­ford to treat this is­sue light­ly. The lives of our cit­i­zens are at risk, and every mea­sure to pro­tect them must be tak­en. This is about putting cit­i­zens first. We re­main res­olute that cit­i­zens must re­main calm and keep them­selves and their fam­i­lies safe, but the State must act.

“In this re­gard, I strong­ly urge the Prime Min­is­ter to im­me­di­ate­ly in­sti­tute a four­teen (14) day shut­down of non-es­sen­tial ser­vices and busi­ness­es, to bet­ter pro­tect our cit­i­zens.”

Min­is­ter’s state­ment on pa­tient’s death

“It is with great sad­ness that I an­nounce that a pa­tient, from Trinidad and To­ba­go, who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, un­for­tu­nate­ly died to­day, Wednes­day 25th March 2020. I of­fer my sin­cere con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and loved ones of the pa­tient. The pa­tient was an el­der­ly male with a pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tion. In def­er­ence to the feel­ings of the fam­i­ly, the Min­istry of Health de­layed the pub­lic re­lease of this in­for­ma­tion so that the fam­i­ly would have am­ple time to re­ceive and process this in­for­ma­tion.”

“While this is a sad mo­ment for all of us, we can on­ly imag­ine how dif­fi­cult this must be for the fam­i­ly. I urge every­one to take a hu­man­is­tic ap­proach and re­spect pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and the fam­i­ly’s right to pri­va­cy at this time. Please al­low them to mourn in peace. I would like to thank the med­ical team who act­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly and pro­vid­ed the high­est lev­el of care to this pa­tient, and con­tin­ues to do so for all oth­er pa­tients.”

“I al­so use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind the pub­lic to re­main calm and to dili­gent­ly ad­here to all the pub­lic health rec­om­men­da­tions of the Min­istry of Health re­lat­ing to per­son­al hy­giene, so­cial dis­tanc­ing, san­i­ti­za­tion of fre­quent­ly used sur­faces, quar­an­tine mea­sures and oth­er ad­vi­sories out­lined by the Min­istry. I as­sure you all that, to­geth­er, we do have the pow­er to over­come this health chal­lenge.”