With the Health Min­istry fi­nal­ly re­leas­ing the lo­ca­tions of con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es through its new ge­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion sys­tem yes­ter­day, res­i­dents of Cen­tral Trinidad say, while they are con­cerned by the num­bers, they are tak­ing pre­cau­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the sys­tem’s da­ta, of­fi­cial­ly launched dur­ing a Min­istry of Health press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ch­agua­nas and en­vi­rons have sev­en con­firmed cas­es, while Cou­va and en­vi­rons have four (not in­clud­ing the pos­i­tive pa­tients at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal).

“It’s a fright­en­ing thing to know there are so many cas­es in Ch­agua­nas. I be­lieve it will pick up more and we will have a lot of ca­su­al­ties but I hope the Gov­ern­ment does the right thing,” Lall Kat­wa­roo, from Fe­lic­i­ty, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Kat­wa­roo said he be­lieved the best thing for the Gov­ern­ment to do is call a state of emer­gency, as he be­lieved there were still too many peo­ple mov­ing about, in­creas­ing the chances of more peo­ple in Cen­tral con­tract­ing the virus.

“I think in one week, two weeks, if they call a state of emer­gency, every­thing will be fine. But as long as they have the free flow of peo­ple, I think this might spread more and it will cause a lot of death,” Kat­wa­roo said.

How­ev­er, while he wor­ries about po­ten­tial lo­cal and com­mu­ni­ty spread, he said, se­mi-jok­ing­ly, that iso­la­tion might be what kills him.

“This life I’m liv­ing, I’m be­ing hon­est with you, I’m not ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing this life be­cause I don’t like the in­door life. And if this con­tin­ues so, I feel I can­not live for too long.”

Iso­lat­ing at home with her two grand­chil­dren and daugh­ter, 73-year-old Thel­ma Wal­lace mean­while said she isn’t scared be­cause her faith in God keeps her strong. Her faith in her fel­low Fe­lic­i­ty res­i­dents is less than firm though, she ad­mit­ted.

Dur­ing the day, she said she looks over her bal­cony for any peo­ple con­gre­gat­ing or lin­ger­ing out­side un­nec­es­sar­i­ly. If they aren’t per­form­ing what she sees as un­nec­es­sary ac­tiv­i­ties, she gives them a piece of her mind.

“It have peo­ple in this coun­try tak­ing this thing as a joke and it very se­ri­ous. It’s some­thing very se­ri­ous. Peo­ple walk­ing up and down. They are bundling up to­geth­er and no mat­ter how much I tell them keep in­side, it’s more they com­ing out­side,” she lament­ed, shak­ing her head.

Ch­agua­nas res­i­dent Dev Ram­jat­tan ex­pressed his be­lief that the Gov­ern­ment was do­ing an ex­cel­lent job, adding his fam­i­ly is tak­ing all pre­cau­tions se­ri­ous­ly.

While look­ing at a copy of the COVID-19 cas­es map, he was op­ti­mistic his chances of avoid­ing the virus were in­creased by his fam­i­ly’s ad­her­ence to pub­lic health rec­om­men­da­tions.

“We are not ven­tur­ing out un­less we re­al­ly have to go out. So for me and my fam­i­ly, gen­er­al­ly, the da­ta is not alarm­ing. Ob­vi­ous­ly, it’s a con­cern but that is if you are not fol­low­ing the pro­to­cols,” he said con­fi­dent­ly.

Cou­va res­i­dent Jerod Williams Jr al­so said he was not wor­ried, al­though he seemed far less in­formed about the pub­lic health ad­vi­sories than Ram­jat­tan was.

“Tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine and the heat will fight the virus, cause the virus took place in a cold coun­try. You un­der­stand what I’m say­ing?” he asked.

Asked if he hadn’t been watch­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s press con­fer­ences or read­ing the ad­vi­sories, Williams said, “I don’t have time to watch tele­vi­sion. A drink lots of pun­cheon. A small vile will do very good for you for the virus. The vol­ume of the al­co­hol is 75 per cent, and what they us­ing to fight this virus now?” he replies as­sertive­ly.

On the op­po­site side of the pave­ment, An­dre Al­berdin was sell­ing fruit and veg­eta­bles at Dol­lar Boys. He said know­ing for a fact that there are, or there were, cas­es in Cou­va means he will take ex­tra pre­cau­tion. He, how­ev­er, sug­gest­ed that the eco­nom­ic and so­cial fall­out in Cou­va from the two-week ban of non-es­sen­tial ser­vices was even more wor­ry­ing for some than the threat of the virus.

“I know a lot of busi­ness­es close down and thing, you know it kind of hard for cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als who don’t have a job at this mo­ment. It is hard for them. For the ones go­ing to the gro­ceries, there are cer­tain times that are sold out. There are cer­tain items that they won’t be able to get be­cause of the price,” he said.

Fur­ther up the street, an el­der­ly woman who lives with her daugh­ter said she nev­er imag­ined at her age that she would be go­ing through some­thing like this.