They have been risk­ing their lives car­ing for pa­tients in the midst of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, yet, when they re­turn home, two Cen­tral medics have no wa­ter to wash their hands—an act world med­ical ex­perts say is one of the best mea­sures to pre­vent the spread of the virus.

The doc­tors, who are op­er­ate at one of the coun­try’s med­ical hubs, but whose names have been with­held to pro­tect their iden­ti­ties, have been suf­fer­ing be­cause of a wa­ter short­age in their com­mu­ni­ty. A rup­tured wa­ter main has left more than 100 house­holds with dry taps.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Thurs­day, a rel­a­tive Sharon Per­sad (not her re­al name), said they were ter­ri­fied that if they do not get wa­ter soon, they will be un­able to pro­tect them­selves from ill­ness and pos­si­bly death.

“In my house­hold we have two doc­tors and we can­not even have wa­ter to wash their scrubs. When they come home we have to take their scrubs and bag it. They leave their shoes out­side. We do not have wa­ter to wash clothes. We are us­ing a lot of hand sani­tis­er be­cause we do not want to waste the wa­ter. Right now we are down to one rim of wa­ter. Three tanks are dry,” she said.

Per­sad said res­i­dents had not re­ceived wa­ter for three weeks and when they did it came on­ly for two hours.

“Peo­ple in the low­er ar­eas got some but not us,” she added.

But the doc­tors and their fam­i­ly are not alone at this time, as oth­er parts of the coun­try have al­so been suf­fer­ing for a reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply at a time when keep­ing sur­round­ings clean are es­sen­tial to the fight against COVID-19.

In a state­ment Thurs­day, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty con­firmed that parts of Cen­tral Trinidad would be with­out wa­ter last night be­cause the au­thor­i­ty had to car­ry out re­pair work on a 16-inch trans­mis­sion pipeline in Car­oli­na. WASA said the ar­eas that would be af­fect­ed by a dis­rup­tion in sup­ply of at least 12 hours were Wind­sor Park, Car­oli­na, Bal­main and Mil­ton.

MP for Cou­va South Rudranath In­dars­ingh al­so said yes­ter­day that con­stituents in Mil­ton, Car­oli­na, Bal­main Gar­dens, Vi­o­let Dri­ve and Cal­cut­ta Nos 1, 2 and 3 have been com­plain­ing about a wa­ter prob­lem for weeks. In­dars­ingh said he had writ­ten to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte seek­ing re­lief. He said re­gion­al man­agers from WASA al­so in­formed him that there was a prob­lem with the Dow Vil­lage boost­er pump.

Cen­tral res­i­dent Shal­i­ma Ramkissoon said her com­mu­ni­ty had been hav­ing con­stant wa­ter woes and they had been forced to buy wa­ter.

“We are see­ing prob­lems for too long. ... I don’t know what they try­ing to do now. It is an area where plen­ty poor peo­ple live and if peo­ple do not have wa­ter to clean they will be at risk,” Ramkissoon said.

Lawrence John said his wife had been wash­ing clothes at her el­der­ly sis­ter’s home in Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas, for the past two weeks but with the en­hanced quar­an­tine mea­sures they could not do so again be­cause both the sis­ter and her hus­band were at high risk to con­tract COVID-19 be­cause of their age and health is­sues, He said his kitchen gar­den had died.

“We were us­ing kitchen wa­ter to keep them alive but now we can­not even wa­ter them. I added a 400 gal­lon tank and sev­en plas­tic bar­rels, the lat­ter for the plants, but was not able to fill them up cause the wa­ter nev­er came back,” he said.

An­oth­er Cen­tral res­i­dent, Cher­ry Ram­dath said she had paid $200 for a tank of wa­ter.

“It is not right. They must do some­thing about this,” she said.