As med­ical per­son­nel at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH) pre­pared to re­sume elec­tive surg­eries on Fri­day, they were de­layed for a few hours more af­ter a wild mon­key was found in the op­er­at­ing the­atre.

Forced to wait for some ad­di­tion­al time as zo­o­log­i­cal of­fi­cers were called in to cap­ture the an­i­mal, hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials have de­nied so­cial me­dia claims that a snake was al­so found on the hos­pi­tal com­pound around the same time.

Fol­low­ing an al­most three-month in­ter­rup­tion of the elec­tive surg­eries pro­gramme im­ple­ment­ed by the Min­istry of Health, Fri­day's re­sump­tion was said to be the first sched­uled to take place in the area of obg­y­nae­col­o­gy.

Elec­tive surg­eries were among the first set of non-es­sen­tial pro­ce­dures to be post­poned by the au­thor­i­ties back in March as they bat­tled to stem the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

In a re­lease on Sat­ur­day, the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) said: “The Au­thor­i­ty cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nies that a snake was al­so found on the hos­pi­tal’s com­pound and any in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ing same is false, mis­lead­ing and ma­li­cious. The in­ci­dent is cur­rent­ly be­ing re­viewed in an ef­fort to im­ple­ment ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures to pre­vent a re­cur­rence.”

The NWRHA said it not­ed two posts that had been cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia.

One was cap­tioned “Mon­key and a Big Snake was found at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day,’” while the oth­er was a video clip of a mon­key atop a shelf with­in a sealed of­fice.

The NWRHA ad­mit­ted staff mem­bers dis­cov­ered the mon­key in one of the de­part­ments at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7 am on Fri­day

The NWRHA said it re­mained com­mit­ted to the con­tin­ued pro­vi­sion of a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment for all their in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal clients.