KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As the fear of the re­cent uptick in lo­calised COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ued to fu­el de­bate on whether the Gov­ern­ment should again lock down the coun­try, the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day re­port­ed eight new cas­es, the high­est dai­ly count since the virus hit Trinidad and To­ba­go’s shores.

In the min­istry’s 6 pm up­date, it said three of sev­en new cas­es re­cent­ly re­turned from Cana­da while four were pri­ma­ry con­tacts of a re­cent case. This pushed the over­all tal­ly of con­firmed cas­es to 164. Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, the min­istry re­port­ed one more case had been re­port­ed overnight, a pa­tient who is a pri­ma­ry con­tact of a per­son who re­cent­ly test­ed pos­i­tive.

Up to last night, there were 34 pa­tients un­der med­ical quar­an­tine and treat­ment.

It has been a wor­ri­some two-week pe­ri­od for cit­i­zens. It was just last Wednes­day that T&T be­gan record­ing new cas­es of lo­cal trans­mis­sion, some­thing that had not hap­pened in two and a half months. How­ev­er, af­ter a new lo­calised case from East Trinidad - case 139 - there has been a steady rise in new cas­es.

On Wednes­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram con­firmed that T&T was in its sec­ond wave of the virus spread. Even worse, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the pub­lic was re­fus­ing to co­op­er­ate of health of­fi­cials car­ry­ing out con­tact trac­ing.

How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh said the Gov­ern­ment is not con­sid­er­ing an­oth­er lock­down at this time. In­stead, he said they pro­posed to use tar­get­ed and strate­gic lock­downs of busi­ness and places ex­posed to the virus.

Members of the public wait in line outside TTPost on St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Mean­while, work­ers at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed are re­fus­ing to turn out to work to­day af­ter a COVID scare in the Fi­nance De­part­ment yes­ter­day.

In a mem­o­ran­dum to em­ploy­ees, TTMF Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor/Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Robert Green said an em­ploy­ee was placed un­der home quar­an­tine by the min­istry. He ad­vised in the mem­o­ran­dum that “em­ploy­ees that were in close con­tact (in ex­cess of 15 min­utes) to this em­ploy­ee, will be re­quired to va­cate the first floor east area (Fi­nance/Cor­po­rate Ser­vices) for the pur­pose of sani­ti­sa­tion.” The em­ploy­ees deemed to be in close con­tact with their co-work­er were al­so placed un­der home quar­an­tine.

But a work­er who spoke on con­di­tion on anonymi­ty yes­ter­day said the oth­er em­ploy­ees were up­set that the en­tire staff was not sent home and the en­tire fa­cil­i­ty prop­er­ly sani­tised.

“Most work­ers were very an­gry about what man­age­ment said in the let­ter be­cause it look­ing as though man­age­ment ain’t care about the staff mem­bers... be­cause they send­ing the fi­nance de­part­ment alone home. I mean every­body us­ing the same build­ing,” the em­ploy­ee told Guardian Me­dia.

The em­ploy­ee said union of­fi­cials were ab­sent yes­ter­day but to pro­tect them­selves, “mem­bers say they not com­ing out to work to­mor­row (to­day) be­cause they’re not tak­ing any chances.”

Calls to the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) pres­i­dent Mario Als last evening went unan­swered.

(With re­port­ing by Rishard Khan)