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Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Tobago woman dies of COVID; family says she ‘just had a runny nose’

by

Camille McEachnie
1329 days ago
20210727
 One of the COVID 19 isolation units at the Scarborough General Hospital, Tobago.

One of the COVID 19 isolation units at the Scarborough General Hospital, Tobago.

CASSANDRA THOMPSON-FORBES

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.


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