The coun­try’s COVID-19 num­bers soared from nine to 49 overnight Fri­day and the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram is ex­pect­ing that num­ber to rise. The 40 new cas­es all came from the 68 cruise ship pas­sen­gers who were quar­an­tined at Camp Ba­lan­dra in To­co af­ter re­turn­ing home on Wednes­day.

The mas­sive in­crease in cas­es has led Gov­ern­ment to shut down the coun­try’s bor­ders from mid­night tonight, even to all na­tion­als. On­ly car­go com­ing in by air and sea will be al­lowed in the coun­try but the crews of these air­planes and ves­sels will not be al­lowed to dis­em­bark.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Health on Park Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Gov­ern­ment con­firmed that the 40 new cas­es were tak­en to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal for ter­tiary lev­el treat­ment for the virus.

Paras­ram, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young were all present to up­date the coun­try on Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to pre­vent­ing the spread of the virus.

Paras­ram said the re­main­ing 28 na­tion­als at Ba­lan­dra will now be kept un­der clos­er watch.

“They will be test­ed again and of course as we ex­pect more will be­come pos­i­tive, we will trans­fer them to nec­es­sary ter­tiary or sec­ondary care fa­cil­i­ty as it be­comes nec­es­sary,” Paras­ram said.

He said for the re­main­ing 28, the Camp Ba­lan­dra fa­cil­i­ty was sani­tised to keep them safe. How­ev­er, he said the quar­an­tine day count for the re­main­ing group will now be­gin at one again, which means that they will be spend­ing an­oth­er 14 days in quar­an­tine.

Paras­ram made it clear, how­ev­er, that the 40 cas­es em­a­nat­ing from the Ba­lan­dra quar­an­tine site did not mean an in­crease in the risk to the pop­u­la­tion.

“Many of them would have come on with mild symp­toms, mean­ing sore throat, some would have fever, run­ny nose, cough,” he said of the symp­toms cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­hib­it­ed by the Ba­lan­dra cas­es. Paras­ram said the group was al­ready a high risk be­cause of their ages. He said as soon as they got the pos­i­tive re­sults on Fri­day night, the pa­tients were tak­en to Cou­va.

“They are gen­er­al­ly not un­well, they have mild symp­toms at this time but be­cause they be­long to a high-risk group, we thought it best they went to a ter­tiary care fa­cil­i­ty in the event that they de­vel­op wors­en­ing con­di­tions,” he said.

“Hav­ing 40 cas­es does not mean that there is any fur­ther risk of com­mu­ni­ty trans­mis­sion to the coun­try. They have been con­tained from day one. There is no change of risk be­tween yes­ter­day and to­day in terms of com­mu­ni­ty spread to the peo­ple of T&T.”

In terms of con­tact trac­ing, Young said that the State has con­tin­ued con­tact trac­ing “across the board.”

“I think there was a lit­tle mis­un­der­stand­ing that I want to cor­rect. Con­tact trac­ing is by phone, so we won’t have peo­ple com­ing out to your home,” he said.