Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Two more peo­ple were test­ed for the mon­key­pox virus over the last week, ac­cord­ing to Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr Roshan Paras­ram.

That makes 11 peo­ple to be test­ed lo­cal­ly for the dis­ease.

All sam­ples have re­turned neg­a­tive to date.

The tests are done at the Trinidad Pub­lic Health Lab in Fed­er­a­tion Park.

De­spite no con­firmed cas­es lo­cal­ly, the CMO ad­vis­es peo­ple to avoid phys­i­cal con­tact with some­one who is dis­play­ing symp­toms of the dis­ease like a rash or touch­ing any­thing they came in con­tact with.

"Avoid con­tact with ob­jects and ma­te­ri­als that a per­son with mon­key­pox has used. For ex­am­ple, we're look­ing at not shar­ing uten­sils, cups for ex­am­ple and not to han­dle or touch bed­ding, tow­els or cloth­ing of per­sons with mon­key­pox," he said.

For those who have to treat or care for pa­tients of the dis­ease, he ad­vised they wear per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment such as gloves and masks.