Trinidad and To­ba­go has hit the 300 mark in the num­ber of peo­ple who have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

The an­nounce­ment came in the Min­istry of Health’s 6 pm COVID-19 up­date yes­ter­day.

The Min­istry had an­nounced 14 cas­es ear­li­er in the day. Of that fig­ure, the Min­istry said that six cas­es test­ed pos­i­tive at pri­vate labs, sev­en were cas­es pend­ing epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion and one was a con­tact of a re­cent­ly pos­i­tive COVID-19 pa­tient.

The evening up­date added five more cas­es, one of which re­quire epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine the ori­gin.

Those 19 cas­es took the over­all tal­ly from 281 to 300.

Yes­ter­day’s tal­ly rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of over 100 re­port­ed cas­es in just six days. Last Wednes­day, there were 199 re­port­ed cas­es but the re­sults of batch test­ing saw high spikes in the tal­ly, with 50 on one day.

As of last evening, the Min­istry of Health said that the num­ber of sam­ples sub­mit­ted to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) and the UWI site for test­ing was 11,590.

The num­ber of ac­tive cas­es stood at 153 and the num­ber of peo­ple dis­charged was 139.

While the 6 pm up­date did not give the fig­ures of those hos­pi­talised, at 10 am the Health Min­istry had re­port­ed that 116 COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients were in hos­pi­tal and 12 pa­tients were en route to be­ing ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal.

That fig­ure rep­re­sent­ed 69 peo­ple at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, which in­clud­ed one per­son in the In­ten­sive Care Unit.

A fur­ther 47 were hos­pi­talised at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.

The state­ment said that COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients in step-down/tran­si­tion fa­cil­i­ties num­bered 20 at the Brook­lyn Fa­cil­i­ty in San­gre Grande.

In­ten­sive Care Units are hos­pi­tal wards that pro­vide treat­ment for peo­ple who are very ill and are staffed with health care pro­fes­sion­als who are trained in ICU treat­ment and the use of so­phis­ti­cat­ed mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment.