PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Sev­er­al San Juan busi­ness­es were put on alert while some closed al­to­geth­er yes­ter­day, as the move­ments of COVID-19 pa­tient 139 and her re­lat­ed con­tacts con­tin­ued to be tracked by Min­istry of Health through­out the com­mu­ni­ty.

Res­i­dents of Aranguez ex­pressed con­cern about the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day af­ter notic­ing the clo­sure of two gro­ceries and oth­er busi­ness­es in the area. One res­i­dent wrote to the me­dia re­quest­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion af­ter notic­ing the busi­ness­es clos­ing their doors, re­port­ed­ly for sani­ti­sa­tion.

Ramish & Leela Su­per­mar­ket Lim­it­ed di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions Yunus Ibrahim con­firmed their East­ern Main Road branch was closed on the re­quest of the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health. He said up to that point none of his staff had been test­ed for the virus but they had sub­mit­ted a full list of staff to the Min­istry of Health.

“No one has shown a symp­tom, it is noth­ing like that. They have tak­en a list of all front­line staff to be able to do what they do best, which is con­tact trac­ing and so we await the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Ibrahim said.

“I be­lieve they are ask­ing them to go to the St Joseph Health Cen­tre and they will take it from there and they’ll ad­vise us ac­cord­ing­ly so we await what the Min­istry has to say at their lev­el of test­ing.”

A woman gets her temperature check at Pennywise Cosmetic Store on Charlotte Street, Port-of-Spain yesterday upon entrance after a customer who visited the Store was tested positive.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

He con­firmed they would al­so be guid­ed with re­gards to the re­open­ing of the gro­cery.

“And so we await the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, so what I can say is for now we are do­ing what we can and we will be lis­ten­ing and sani­tis­ing, the in­te­ri­or, and the up­per floors and low­er floors of the su­per­mar­ket, for the com­fort of the pub­lic as well be­fore the close of to­day,” he said.

San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Vivek Char­ran con­firmed that some staff at oth­er busi­ness­es were told to stay home to­day be­cause of pos­si­ble con­tact with some­one who was pos­i­tive for the virus. He said some busi­ness­es were told to con­duct thor­ough sani­ti­sa­tion mea­sures be­fore re­open­ing.

How­ev­er, Char­ran said busi­ness­es in the area have ad­hered to the COVID pre­ven­tion guide­lines. He said de­spite the clo­sures it ap­peared to be busi­ness as usu­al in terms of foot traf­fic but he was con­fi­dent his mem­bers and cus­tomers have been so­cial dis­tanc­ing in stores, wash­ing their hands and sani­tis­ing to pre­vent pos­si­ble trans­mis­sion. 

On Wednes­day, First Cit­i­zens’ bank on the East­ern Main Road, San Juan, was al­so put on alert while two Pen­ny­wise out­lets in Port-of-Spain were closed for sani­ti­sa­tion af­ter the pa­tient con­firmed con­duct­ing busi­ness at both places. The two Pen­ny­wise branch­es re­opened for busi­ness yes­ter­day.