Two more peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the nov­el Coro­n­avirus (COVID-19), tak­ing the to­tal of in­fect­ed in­di­vid­u­als in Trinidad and To­ba­go to nine.

In a re­lease late Wednes­day, the Min­istry of Health said one pa­tient was male and the oth­er a fe­male.

It added that both pa­tients had re­cent trav­el his­to­ries but their cas­es were un­re­lat­ed. The re­lease al­so not­ed that all nine cas­es of COVID-19 so far in T&T had been im­port­ed cas­es.

The news comes even as a to­tal of 70 na­tion­als who were on a cruise that was de­nied en­try to Mar­tinique due to sus­pect­ed COVID-19 cas­es on board re­turned home be­tween Tues­day night and Wednes­day. Two of the na­tion­als on that cruise, two women, test­ed pos­i­tive while they were on their way back to T&T and were im­me­di­ate­ly tak­en to the des­ig­nat­ed quar­an­tine hos­pi­tals when they ar­rived at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Tues­day night. The oth­er 68 na­tion­als were quar­an­tined in Ba­lan­dra for the des­ig­nat­ed 14-day pe­ri­od af­ter they ar­rived home on Wednes­day.

An­oth­er 18 na­tion­als who re­turned from the UK on a Vir­gin At­lantic flight that land­ed on To­ba­go Wednes­day af­ter­noon have al­so been quar­an­tined in To­ba­go and Trinidad for the 14-day pe­ri­od.

The re­lease re­mind­ed the pub­lic that per­son­al pro­tec­tive mea­sures are the most ef­fec­tive tools against COVID-19 and that one of the ways per­sons may avoid get­ting sick is by wash­ing their hands:

• af­ter us­ing the bath­room

• be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter prepar­ing food

• af­ter cough­ing or sneez­ing

• when car­ing for per­sons who are sick

• be­fore eat­ing

• af­ter han­dling an­i­mal waste

• when hands are dirty