Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

To­ba­go has record­ed its first COVID-19 case. The an­nounce­ment was made via a press re­lease is­sued by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Di­vi­sion of Health and Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day evening.

The state­ment said that the Trinidad and To­ba­go res­i­dent ar­rived in To­ba­go on an in­ter­na­tion­al flight on Wednes­day 18th March 2020 and was placed in quar­an­tine.

“In keep­ing with the Di­vi­sion’s pro­to­cols, im­me­di­ate­ly up­on dis­em­bark­ing, the in­di­vid­ual was screened by the Port Health Au­thor­i­ties at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. The in­di­vid­ual was im­me­di­ate­ly placed in one of our se­cured quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties for a planned pe­ri­od of four­teen (14) days,” the state­ment said.

It added: “Five days lat­er, on March 22nd, 2020, the in­di­vid­ual de­vel­oped symp­toms and was ad­mit­ted to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. A sam­ple was tak­en and rushed to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) lab­o­ra­to­ry to be test­ed for COVID-19, which has since re­turned pos­i­tive.”

The Di­vi­sion said it re­ceived the re­sults at 5.30 pm yes­ter­day. This took the count in Trinidad and To­ba­go to 52.

“Giv­en that the in­di­vid­ual is un­well, the per­son will be trans­ferred to Trinidad to un­der­go ad­di­tion­al treat­ment, as per es­tab­lished pro­to­cols,” the state­ment said.

The Di­vi­sion not­ed that the re­main­ing per­sons at the Di­vi­sion’s quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties re­main in good health and con­tin­ue to be mon­i­tored twice dai­ly. The state­ment al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of sim­ple, pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures will re­duce the risk of con­tract­ing COVID-19. Up to yes­ter­day, 62 per­sons were said to be un­der quar­an­tine at fa­cil­i­ties in To­ba­go.