Posthu­mous test­ing of COVID-19 cas­es is not be­ing con­duct­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go, even if a pa­tient is sus­pect­ed to have died from the virus, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said Thursday.

“Au­top­sies are gen­er­al­ly not rec­om­mend­ed and are not, in terms of Trinidad’s pol­i­cy, we are not go­ing to do au­top­sies for per­sons that have died even if they are sus­pect­ed of COVID(-19),” Paras­ram said dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, not­ing such ac­tiv­i­ty presents a haz­ard to the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in­volved.

“The test­ing posthu­mous­ly be­comes dif­fi­cult and we are ex­pos­ing po­ten­tial per­sons. So if we have clin­i­cal in­di­ca­tions that the signs and symp­toms are there, then we would treat it as if it was COVID-19-re­lat­ed on sus­pi­cion rather than try­ing to con­firm. Try­ing to con­firm puts the health­care work­er as well as oth­er per­sons at risk un­nec­es­sar­i­ly. “

By the end of yes­ter­day the num­ber of cas­es had climbed to 97 and a sixth death.

The ques­tion about au­top­sies was raised af­ter ru­mours sur­faced on so­cial me­dia sur­round­ing T&T fifth COVID-19 death, Vic­tor Mooti­ram. The ru­mours sug­gest­ed Mooti­ram died at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (SFGH) “and on­ly af­ter his death they test­ed him and he was pos­i­tive for COVID.”

Since the cir­cu­la­tion of the mes­sage, work­ers at the SFGH have ex­pressed con­cerns over re­turn­ing to work due to fears for their health and safe­ty. (See page 6). And while the CMO did not want to con­firm if Mootir­ma died at this fa­cil­i­ty, he not­ed there was an in­her­ent risk for any health­care work­er at any health fa­cil­i­ty. How­ev­er, he said the min­istry has pro­vid­ed them with the nec­es­sary per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) to mit­i­gate the risks.

“Over the last month or so, many sus­pect­ed cas­es would have passed through the hos­pi­tals in the A&Es (ac­ci­dent and emer­gen­cies) and stuff, as they would have made their way to Cau­ra or Cou­va af­ter get­ting a pos­i­tive. What we have put in place in those fa­cil­i­ties is of course triage...all the peo­ple who would have in­ter­act­ed with you at that point would have had all the nec­es­sary PPE, so that the hos­pi­tal can be as­sured that any­body who would have been po­ten­tial­ly ex­posed has the nec­es­sary lev­el of pro­tec­tion.”