The over­all num­ber of deaths due to COVID-19 rose by two yes­ter­day to 81, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion con­firmed in its re­leas­es up­dat­ing the coun­try on the sta­tus of the virus’ treat­ment lo­cal­ly.

In its first up­date yes­ter­day morn­ing, the min­istry said two lat­est two vic­tims were el­der­ly men, one with no pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tions and the oth­er with pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tions.

The to­tal ac­tive cas­es al­so climbed to an ad­di­tion­al 48 peo­ple, with 22 new cas­es re­port­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing and a fur­ther and 26 in the late re­port. These lat­est cas­es moved the cur­rent ac­tive cas­es to 1,839 peo­ple.

In oth­er high­lights in its sec­ond re­port, the min­istry said the to­tal num­ber of com­mu­ni­ty case pa­tients who had re­cov­ered from COVID-19 was 1,750. These are peo­ple who were pre­vi­ous­ly pos­i­tive and in self-iso­la­tion at home and sub­se­quent­ly met the dis­charge cri­te­ria and were re­leased from self-iso­la­tion. The to­tal num­ber of pa­tients dis­charged from pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties rose to 1,093.

It added that CARPHA has so far re­port­ed­ly re­ceived some 32,354 sam­ples from this coun­try and the to­tal num­ber of pos­i­tive tests at pub­lic and pri­vate fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go—since test­ing be­gan ear­li­er this year—now stands at 4,763. ­—Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant