An­na-Lisa Paul

A group of Cuban nurs­es are due to ar­rive in T&T short­ly to as­sist lo­cal health­care pro­fes­sion­als in the fight against the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19).

Con­firm­ing this dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said, “It has al­ways been this Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy to seek Cuban pro­fes­sion­als where there is a lack of that par­tic­u­lar spe­cial­i­ty in T&T. As per COVID-19, we do have a co­hort of in­ten­sive care nurs­es com­ing in.”

In­di­cat­ing that gov­ern­ment had signed off on it ap­prox­i­mate­ly three weeks ago, Deyals­ingh said in­ter­views were done on­line to as­sess the suit­abil­i­ty and lan­guage skills of the ap­pli­cants.

While it is not known when and how ex­act­ly they will ar­rive in the coun­try, the for­eign per­son­nel will be de­ployed through­out in­ten­sive care units at the var­i­ous hos­pi­tals.

The Cuban nurs­es will be un­der the purview of Dr An­tho­ny Parkin­son of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) - whom the min­istry has brought on to man­age the in­ten­sive care unit re­sponse across T&T.

So far, Cu­ba has de­ployed health­care work­ers to Be­lize, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Do­mini­ca and Ja­maica.

In a sta­tus up­date on pa­tients, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram said there are cur­rent­ly three pa­tients in the In­ten­sive Care Unit at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal - of which two were said to be sta­ble, whilst the oth­er was in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

In the High De­pen­den­cy Unit, there are 14 pa­tients, all of whom he claimed are sta­ble.

Of the 48 re­main­ing pa­tients at Cou­va, Paras­ram de­scribed them as “am­bu­la­to­ry” as he ex­plained, “They are free to walk about, they have mild ill­ness and some of them ac­tu­al­ly have no symp­toms at present.”

“In Cau­ra, there are five am­bu­la­to­ry cas­es, again, be­ing able to walk about as if you are home and all of those are sta­ble as well. There are a num­ber of cas­es that are await­ing swab re­sults that are be­ing held at Cau­ra just to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion.”

In the 4 pm dai­ly up­date from the Min­istry of Health, of­fi­cials re­port­ed that 539 sam­ples had been sub­mit­ted to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) for test­ing; T&T had record­ed 83 pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es; three deaths had re­sult­ed from the virus in per­sons 70 years and old­er, and one pa­tient had been dis­charged af­ter re­cov­er­ing.

Mean­while, To­ba­go has record­ed its’ third COVID-19 case.

The in­for­ma­tion was con­firmed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) Di­vi­sion of Health and Well­ness in a state­ment on Mon­day.

The re­lease said the in­di­vid­ual has been iso­lat­ed and is be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored.

Up to 10 am yes­ter­day, is­land of­fi­cials con­firmed that 31 sam­ples had been sub­mit­ted to CARPHA for test­ing.

Three sam­ples have been test­ed pos­i­tive, while 63 peo­ple re­main quar­an­tined at the Di­vi­sion’s quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties.

Fur­ther to this, the MOH is re­mind­ing the pub­lic that CARPHA is the on­ly ref­er­ence lab­o­ra­to­ry au­tho­rised to test per­sons in T&T.

Paras­ram said, “We have said quite a while ago that the on­ly ref­er­ence lab that is do­ing test­ing for T&T and the MOH, is the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) and we con­tin­ue to on­ly recog­nise the CARPHA.”

The CMO ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to, “Be­have as if the per­son next to you has COVID-19…and stay­ing at home to stay safe is our re­sponse.”

The pub­lic is re­mind­ed that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of sim­ple, pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures will re­duce the risk of con­tract­ing COVID-19.