Al­though the Min­istry of Health (MOH) has re­ceived 190,000 rapid anti­gen test­ing kits for dis­tri­b­u­tion in­to health care set­tings, they will not be dis­trib­uted just yet as val­i­da­tion tests must first be done.

Dis­clos­ing this dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s COVID-19 brief­ing, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the ship­ment which con­sists of two types of test kits–Stan­dard F and Stan­dard Q–ar­rived in the coun­try as sched­uled last Wednes­day.

He said the 150,000 Stan­dard F kits would be dis­trib­uted to all hos­pi­tals and some com­mu­ni­ty set­tings, while 40,000 Stan­dard Q kits would be used for com­mu­ni­ty test­ing.

Deyals­ingh said per­son­nel are be­ing trained and that four sites in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go have al­ready been cho­sen. "We are in a po­si­tion with­in the next week or two, to ac­tu­al­ly start the tri­al run of rapid anti­gen test­ing for the first time in Trinidad, us­ing kits that have a very high de­gree of ac­cu­ra­cy."

Mean­while, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Naresh Nan­dram said they in­tend to place the de­vices in all Ac­ci­dent & Emer­gency De­part­ments at ma­jor hos­pi­tals in­clud­ing To­ba­go.

Nan­dram said the new rapid anti­gen test­ing was not a re­place­ment of the stan­dard PCR test­ing but has been de­signed to work in con­junc­tion with it.

He con­firmed that train­ing of per­son­nel should be com­plet­ed with­in the next few weeks, as val­i­da­tion process­es need­ed to be com­plet­ed be­fore it was ad­min­is­tered to the pop­u­la­tion.

Look­ing at the glob­al pic­ture, Deyals­ingh said there were now eight coun­tries in the world where the COVID-19 cas­es had crossed the one-mil­lion mark. With glob­al in­fec­tions in­creas­ing by al­most 575,000 per day, he pre­dict­ed the num­ber of coun­tries would soon in­crease to 11.

Asked if the au­thor­i­ties would con­sid­er in­creas­ing the open­ing hours of gyms to 4 am, the min­is­ter said it is some­thing that can be con­sid­ered ahead of next week­end’s con­fer­ence which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will chair.

Asked if fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion had been giv­en to re­open­ing the coun­try’s bor­ders, Deyals­ingh, who is part of a three-mem­ber com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the PM last week­end to look at this is­sue, said they held their first meet­ing last Tues­day. The com­mit­tee is chaired by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and in­cludes At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

Deyals­ingh said they would have to col­lec­tive­ly ex­am­ine the leg­isla­tive frame­work, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues and health im­pli­ca­tions be­fore mak­ing a de­ci­sion.

They willl meeet again this week­end, Deyals­ingh said, and Young would present the com­mit­tee’s find­ings to Row­ley who would make the rec­om­men­da­tions.