Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bissess­er has said that a pa­tient who test­ed pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus COVID-19, has died at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.

She made the an­nounce­ment in a me­dia re­lease in which she called for a lock­down of the coun­try for 14 days.

"A Covid-19 pos­i­tive pa­tient at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal has died. We ex­tend our deep­est con­do­lences, and we must be cog­nisant of the se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions and con­se­quences which may fol­low," she said in the state­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia that she was able to con­firm the death but did not give any fur­ther de­tails.

Asked for con­fir­ma­tion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said that the Min­istry of Health is the of­fi­cial source of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the Gov­ern­ment.

The Min­is­ter did not re­turn calls or What­sApp mes­sages up to the time of this post. He was at­tend­ing the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives dur­ing a sit­ting.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr Roshan Paras­ram al­so did not re­turn calls or re­ply to mes­sages.

How­ev­er, a se­nior mem­ber of the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty con­firmed the death to us.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment mea­sures for a na­tion­wide shut­down of all non-es­sen­tial ser­vices and busi­ness­es for 14 days, in the first in­stance, in light of the trends we are see­ing in the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

"As re­spon­si­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple, it is the Op­po­si­tion’s firm be­lief that the Gov­ern­ment must take de­ci­sive and tough ac­tions to pre­serve and pro­tect the health of the cit­i­zens of our beloved na­tion," she said.

She added: "The Gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed that more than 20000 na­tion­als have re­turned to Trinidad and To­ba­go in the last two weeks and are re­port­ed­ly in self-quar­an­tine. This re­quires that the State iden­ti­fies these per­sons and en­sure that they self-iso­late. Glob­al­ly, the coun­tries which have tak­en ear­ly, pre­emp­tive and de­ci­sive ac­tions have proven to be those coun­tries which have most ef­fec­tive­ly con­tained the rapid spread of the virus."

She in­sist­ed, "The Gov­ern­ment has rec­og­nized that moral sua­sion has not had the de­sired ef­fect, and in spite of re­peat­ed calls for good sense to pre­vail, it is clear that some have not lis­tened."

She con­clud­ed, "In this re­gard, I strong­ly urge the Prime Min­is­ter to im­me­di­ate­ly in­sti­tute a four­teen (14) day shut­down of non-es­sen­tial ser­vices and busi­ness­es, to bet­ter pro­tect our cit­i­zens."