The Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, vis­it­ed the Cou­va Med­ical and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, prais­ing health­care work­ers and staff for their ef­forts in fight­ing the pan­dem­ic.

"Be­ing here as your Min­is­ter of Health at this fa­cil­i­ty this morn­ing is an ho­n­our for me. I don't con­sid­er this work. I con­sid­er this as an ho­n­our to be amongst pro­fes­sion­als and pa­tri­ots," he said in an ad­dress to staff that was shared with the me­dia.

Re­fer­ring to staff from all stra­ta of the med­ical team at the hos­pi­tal, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said: "These peo­ple lead the charge and Trinidad and To­ba­go owes each and every one of you and your col­leagues a debt of grat­i­tude."

"On be­half of the coun­try and on be­half of the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, his cab­i­net and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, may I say thank you in this sea­son where light tri­umphs over dark­ness, where good tri­umphs over evil and with your con­tin­ued sup­port and pro­fes­sion­al­ism we would tri­umph over the virus- COVID-19. Thank you, thank you, thank you," he said.

Al­so present were the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Davlin Thomas and oth­er se­nior rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

The ac­com­pa­ny­ing re­lease not­ed that the min­istry con­tin­ues to pro­vide the re­sources need­ed to sup­port the sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts of health­care work­ers who op­er­ate in var­i­ous facets of pub­lic health dur­ing this pan­dem­ic.

The Min­is­ter's praise came days af­ter a nurse who works on the In­ten­sive Care Unit of the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, Josette Smith-Bethel re­vealed nurs­es are trau­ma­tised and scarred by the num­ber of deaths they have wit­nessed as their pa­tients suc­cumbed to COVID-19.

Over the last two weeks, the top­ic of ICU beds has been an is­sue as space was lim­it­ed due to the high num­ber of crit­i­cal­ly ill pa­tients be­ing ad­mit­ted to the hos­pi­tal. How­ev­er, space has be­come avail­able due to the high num­ber of deaths over the last few days.

The Health Min­istry yes­ter­day al­so re­mind­ed that the na­tion­al re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to be peo­ple-cen­tred, col­lab­o­ra­tive and sci­ence-dri­ven as it en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to get vac­ci­nat­ed.