JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, July 14, 2025

Deyalsingh’s warning as COVID-19 deaths hit 101

by

Rishard Khan
1726 days ago
20201022

Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go has now record­ed over 100 COVID-19 deaths since its first in­fec­tion was record­ed al­most eight months ago on March 12.

The lat­est deaths record­ed yes­ter­day by the Min­istry of Health were an el­der­ly male and fe­male with pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tions and one fe­male. Their deaths took the toll up to 101, 93 of which oc­curred over the coun­try’s sec­ond phase of in­fec­tion which be­gan on Ju­ly 20 with case 139. The first death lo­cal­ly was record­ed on March 25.

Com­ment­ing on the un­for­tu­nate mile­stone short­ly af­ter the up­date was giv­en, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh told Guardian Me­dia it was an­oth­er wake-up call.

“My con­do­lences go out to all the fam­i­lies. With each death, a fam­i­ly los­es a loved one. It’s not a sta­tis­tic to us,” he said.

“I am hop­ing num­ber 100 would res­onate with peo­ple who are still not tak­ing this virus se­ri­ous­ly and are still not do­ing the sim­ple things like wear­ing masks, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and so on.”

He urged the pub­lic to ad­here to the health pro­to­cols and keep their “home en­vi­ron­ment - es­pe­cial­ly if there are el­der­ly peo­ple - free from vis­i­tors. Don’t let the virus come in­to your home and in­fect the el­der­ly.”

The ma­jor­i­ty of fa­tal­i­ties from the virus have so far been el­der­ly, male and those with pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tions.

His ap­peal comes as three ma­jor events are in cit­i­zens’ sights - Hal­loween, Di­vali and Christ­mas and New Years - ac­tiv­i­ties which en­tail vis­it­ing house­holds.

But Deyals­ingh warned, “This year has to be a year where we give up these things oth­er­wise the death toll will con­tin­ue to go up.”

De­spite the in­crease in deaths, Deyals­ingh said there is some light at the end of the tun­nel - a de­crease in the av­er­age num­ber of cas­es be­ing re­port­ed dai­ly.

“That’s a good thing to be cel­e­brat­ed but we must con­tin­ue with the pub­lic health mea­sures,” he said

“Some peo­ple are in­ter­pret­ing this drop in cas­es to mean I don’t have to wear a mask, I don’t have to so­cial dis­tance. But as we move for­ward, we have to con­tin­ue with the sim­ple pub­lic health mea­sures as slight­ly in­con­ve­nient as they may be. “

The Min­istry of Health con­firmed 59 ad­di­tion­al in­fec­tions yes­ter­day but not­ed this does not rep­re­sent an in­crease over a 24-hour pe­ri­od, as it in­clud­ed sam­ple re­sults tak­en be­tween Oc­to­ber 18-20.

The num­ber of ac­tive cas­es de­creased yes­ter­day to 1,459 af­ter 74 peo­ple were re­leased from the min­istry’s care - 10 were dis­charged from pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties while 64 were re­leased from home self-iso­la­tion as re­cov­ered com­mu­ni­ty cas­es. Of the re­main­ing ac­tive cas­es, 1,334 are in home self-iso­la­tion.

The re­leased pa­tients brought the to­tal num­ber of re­cov­ered pa­tients up to 3,832. There were 75 pa­tients at hos­pi­tals, 50 at step-down/tran­si­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties and 280 in state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored