RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Amidst re­ports of COVID-19 in­fec­tions at two ma­jor su­per­mar­ket chains, more shop­pers are flock­ing to small­er re­tail stores and are opt­ing for curb­side or on­line shop­ping with­in re­cent times.

This was re­vealed by the pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion Ra­jiv Diptee.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Diptee as­sured that strict COVID-19 pro­to­cols are in place to pro­tect staff and shop­pers if pos­i­tive cas­es are iden­ti­fied at su­per­mar­kets.

“When an em­ploy­ee tests pos­i­tive, one or more, we keep records as per con­tact trac­ing re­quire­ments. We li­aise with the prin­ci­pal med­ical of­fi­cer and CMO. We sani­tise the premis­es, check for sec­ondary, ter­tiary trac­ing. We try to min­imise the num­ber of peo­ple in con­tact,” Diptee said.

He ex­plained that staff is ros­tered for the num­ber of days and are kept on sep­a­rate shifts on sep­a­rate days. 

Say­ing com­min­gling is some­times un­avoid­able be­cause of the na­ture of hu­man be­ings, Diptee said em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers have been even more vig­i­lant be­cause of the num­ber of in­fec­tions and deaths.

“It re­al­ly is scary right now. Every­one knows some­one who has con­tract­ed COVID and peo­ple who may have lost their lives to COVID. We are see­ing a height­ened lev­el of ur­gency where com­pli­ance is con­cerned,” Diptee added.

He not­ed that su­per­mar­kets have been crack­ing down on the cul­ture of a dai­ly shop­per who comes every day to the su­per­mar­ket to get one or two items.

Diptee al­so said, “We are see­ing more cus­tomers, in par­tic­u­lar, go­ing more dig­i­tal in terms of curb­side and What­sApp de­liv­er­ies and on­line shop­ping where there are third par­ty apps in place to dis­trib­ute. Some of the cus­tomers are al­to­geth­er avoid­ing the big­ger stores and head­ing to the small­er re­tail stores which are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing more traf­fic.” 

Last Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urged cit­i­zens to re­frain from go­ing to the gro­cery dai­ly, say­ing shop­ping should be done on­ly if it is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary.

Sev­er­al gro­ceries have al­so ad­just­ed shop­ping times to pre­vent the spread of the virus.

Ear­li­er this week Xtra Foods mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, Daniel Austin, con­firmed that two staff mem­bers test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus but de­nied that the su­per­mar­ket had 54 pos­i­tive cas­es as re­port­ed on so­cial me­dia.

He said all Min­istry of Health pro­to­cols were be­ing fol­lowed.

On its Face­book page on Thurs­day, Xtra Foods stat­ed, “We recog­nise and thank our cus­to­di­ans for the hard work they do to keep us safe. They work as­sid­u­ous­ly to keep our branch­es sani­tised and cleaned through­out the day.”

Per­sad’s Gro­cery at High Street in Princes Town al­so con­firmed that one em­ploy­ee had test­ed pos­i­tive on May 10. Both gro­ceries were closed and thor­ough­ly sani­tised be­fore re­open­ing.