AN­NA-LISA PAUL and SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Nine Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) em­ploy­ees are now un­der­go­ing tests to de­ter­mine if they con­tract­ed the COVID-19 virus af­ter one of their co-work­ers was con­firmed to be case num­ber 148 on Mon­day.

And fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment by Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing, the TPRC’s head of­fice re­mained closed to fa­cil­i­tate a sani­ti­sa­tion ex­er­cise.

TPRC chair­man Kwasi Robin­son con­firmed he was con­tact­ed by se­nior health of­fi­cials af­ter the work­er's re­sult.

“We nor­mal­ly con­duct sani­ti­sa­tion ex­er­cis­es twice a month but we moved it up a few days ear­ly to to­day (Mon­day) af­ter we learned that one of the work­ers test­ed pos­i­tive,” Robin­son told Guardian Me­dia

The next sched­uled sani­ti­sa­tion ex­er­cise was due to be done on Fri­day. He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 em­ploy­ees re­mained at home.

Robin­son said the in­fect­ed em­ploy­ee was part of a ten-mem­ber ex­ter­nal team re­spon­si­ble for road and recre­ation grounds main­te­nance and beau­ti­fi­ca­tion projects through­out the dis­trict. As such, he said, the en­tire ex­ter­nal team would have to be test­ed.

Un­able to di­vulge any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, Robin­son said, “I have full con­fi­dence in the Min­istry of Health and I await their up­dates.”

Tunapuna/ Piarco Regional Corporation chairman Kwasi Robinson

With news on so­cial and tra­di­tion­al me­dia that case 148 lives in Ari­ma, May­or Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian said burgess­es were thrown in­to a state of pan­ic and wor­ry.

The T&T Guardian was told the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice de­part­ment at the Ari­ma Town Hall had to be shut down af­ter it was con­firmed the son/daugh­ter of a mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cer was a mem­ber of the SEA class at the Tacarigua Pres­by­ter­ian School where the lat­est case's 11-year-old son at­tends.

Ten of­fi­cers were sent home.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian said the news cre­at­ed a scare and pan­ic in the bor­ough.

"Burgess­es have been bom­bard­ing me with calls ask­ing all sorts of ques­tions. Peo­ple want to know where case 148 works, shopped and fre­quent­ed. Peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly wor­ried," Mor­ris-Ju­lian said.

She said while some peo­ple have been fol­low­ing safe­ty pro­to­cols oth­ers have not been wear­ing their masks in pub­lic spaces.

"Some peo­ple have no re­spect for one an­oth­er. It boils down to per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. There is on­ly so much the cor­po­ra­tion can do."

In the com­ing days, Mor­ris-Ju­lian said she would in­stall 45 "wash­basin" sta­tions at strate­gic lo­ca­tions in the bor­ough for hand sani­tis­ing as well as dis­trib­ute face masks to con­tain the spread of the virus.