Loyse Vin­cent

The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) has test­ed 187 air­port work­ers in To­ba­go af­ter mem­bers of the pub­lic and staff mem­bers raised con­cerns af­ter two Air­port Au­thor­i­ty staff mem­bers died from COVID-19, last week.

A 38-year-old male Air­port Au­thor­i­ty Es­tate Con­sta­ble passed on May 28, fol­lowed by a 34-year-old fe­male ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cer who passed days lat­er on May 30.

Fol­low­ing the death of both staff mem­bers, the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty is­sued a press re­lease stat­ing that steps were tak­en to en­sure that “iden­ti­fied of­fices” were thor­ough­ly san­i­tized and dis­in­fect­ed and con­tact-trac­ing was al­so ini­ti­at­ed for pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary con­tacts of af­fect­ed per­sons.

The au­thor­i­ty al­so an­nounced that steps would al­so be tak­en to swab staff mem­bers for COVID-19.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the man­ag­er of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty Zo­la Joseph for an up­date and she con­firmed that through a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Di­vi­sion of Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment, 187 staff mem­bers were swabbed for the virus.

“This fig­ure rep­re­sents em­ploy­ees from the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty as well as work­ers from Caribbean Air­lines, Swis­s­port and oth­er stake­hold­er en­ti­ties on the air­port es­tate.”

As it re­lates to steps tak­en to ad­dress health and safe­ty con­cerns at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, she said sani­ti­sa­tion has been con­tin­u­ous.

“The au­thor­i­ty has a con­tin­u­ous rig­or­ous and ro­bust sani­ti­sa­tion, dis­in­fec­tion and clean­ing regime of every area with­in our air­port fa­cil­i­ties in ac­cor­dance with strict in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice health and safe­ty pro­to­cols and as guid­ed by the Min­istry of Health.”

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty Hay­den New­ton al­so an­nounced that in ad­di­tion to es­tab­lished COVID-19 safe­ty pro­to­cols such as reg­u­lar hand­wash­ing and sani­ti­sa­tion as well as re­duced of­fice ca­pac­i­ty, go­ing for­ward “all mem­bers of staff are man­dat­ed to wear face shields and face­masks at all times while on the com­pound.”

The ca­pac­i­ty of all com­pa­ny ve­hi­cles was re­duced to 25 per cent, or no more than two peo­ple in com­pa­ny ve­hi­cles at any par­tic­u­lar point in time.

As it re­lates to trav­ellers, the au­thor­i­ty main­tained that face masks are re­quired for en­try in­to the ter­mi­nal build­ing, which must al­so be worn at all times in the air­port ter­mi­nal.

Mean­while, the Min­istry of Health re­port­ed a fur­ther 14 deaths to COVID-19 yes­ter­day.

In its dai­ly up­date, the Min­istry al­so re­port­ed 546 new cas­es from sam­ples tak­en dur­ing the pe­ri­od May 27th to June 2nd.

Ac­tive cas­es now stand at 9,817 of which 8,677 are quar­an­ti­ning at home.

106,587 have so far re­ceived their first vac­ci­na­tion dos­es and 1,179 have re­ceived two dos­es.