Camille McEach­nie

Two more peo­ple died of COVID-19 in To­ba­go, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of COVID- re­lat­ed deaths to 39.

A 62-year-old woman with­out co­mor­bidi­ties and an 81-year-old man with co­mor­bidi­ties died on Mon­day night, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est in­for­ma­tion re­leased by the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA).

Ac­cord­ing to the woman’s chil­dren, their moth­er In­grid George, of Ply­mouth, who re­cent­ly re­tired from the Kendall Farm School, was “healthy and just had a run­ny nose.”

They said they ex­pect­ed her to re­turn home af­ter she went to the hos­pi­tal seek­ing at­ten­tion. They are now warn­ing the pub­lic to take all flu-like symp­toms se­ri­ous­ly.

One daugh­ter, who works at the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT), said she be­lieves she took the dis­ease home to her moth­er.

She told Guardian Me­dia, some of her co-work­ers con­tract­ed the virus and when she be­gan feel­ing ill, she test­ed for the dis­ease.

“On Ju­ly 11, mom be­gan hav­ing a run­ny nose. She hard­ly left the yard, I was the one go­ing out to work. Mom would wet her plants and at­tend to them. She was healthy. She re­tired from the Kendall Farm School two years ago. She was nev­er sick,” the daugh­ter said.

“When the flu con­tin­ued to stay on her, she spoke to a church mem­ber who had COVID be­fore. He told her to get test­ed. She was due to get test­ed but got ill af­ter she dis­cov­ered I test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID,” her daugh­ter told Guardian Me­dia.

She said af­ter she told her moth­er she had test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease, her moth­er be­gan wor­ry­ing and be­came quite ill.

An­oth­er daugh­ter, An­drae George, said their chil­dren are now bad­ly af­fect­ed by their grand­moth­er’s pass­ing at the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal at Sig­nal Hill.

The fam­i­ly said they will now con­sid­er tak­ing the COVID vac­cine and re­mind­ed the pub­lic that even af­ter tak­ing the jab, peo­ple must still fol­low COVID pro­to­cols.

They said they see vac­ci­nat­ed co-work­ers, friends and fam­i­ly still not ad­her­ing to COVID pro­to­cols, putting them­selves and oth­ers at risk for get­ting the dis­ease.

“It’s a per­son­al choice, so when I feel bet­ter, I will de­cide if I will take the vac­cine. We still have to fol­low all the pro­to­cols like hand wash­ing and so­cial dis­tanc­ing af­ter we take the in­jec­tion as I have seen peo­ple let down their guard af­ter get­ting their two shots.”

Ac­cord­ing to the TRHA, as of Mon­day at 10 pm, there were 38 new COVID cas­es in To­ba­go. A to­tal of 11,376 peo­ple took the vac­cine, of which 9,405 got two dos­es.