A child of a Re­pub­lic Bank em­ploy­ee has test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 prompt­ing the clo­sure of its West Mall Branch. At least eleven em­ploy­ees will now be swabbed af­ter com­ing in­to close con­tact with the child and her moth­er, ac­cord­ing to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing an im­promp­tu Min­istry of Health press brief­ing on Thurs­day morn­ing. He ex­plained that CCTV footage was re­viewed to de­ter­mine the num­ber of peo­ple who came in­to con­tact with them.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said all in­fec­tion con­trol mea­sures were un­der­way at Re­pub­lic Bank, in­clud­ing san­i­ti­za­tion of the work­space.

“This is not cause for pan­ic, but it is cause for con­cern,” Deyals­ingh said.
He said this case should shock us in­to a “state of re­al­i­ty.”
“Now that we have a mi­nor who has test­ed pos­i­tive, it be­comes more im­por­tant that all the ad­vice we’ve been giv­ing about chil­dren is fol­lowed,” he added.

He said he hopes this un­der­scores the im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing mi­nors.
At Thurs­day’s brief­ing, the min­is­ter an­nounced that two cas­es were pend­ing epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Those are cas­es #139 and #141.

Re­pub­lic Bank is­sued a state­ment an­nounc­ing the clo­sure of the West Mall branch, but it did not pro­vide a rea­son for the clo­sure.

Re­porter: Khamal Georges