The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has es­tab­lished an­oth­er step-down / tran­si­tion fa­cil­i­ty, for the treat­ment of COVID-19 pa­tients.

The new fa­cil­i­ty is lo­cat­ed close to the Tacarigua Health Cen­tre, and is a re­fur­bished, for­mer­ly aban­doned build­ing at the back of the Cen­tre.

NCRHA CEO, Davlin Thomas, says the new Tacarigua fa­cil­i­ty “will be used as con­tin­gency in the war against Covid-19”. 

“The fa­cil­i­ty was ren­o­vat­ed and up­grad­ed by an in-house team from the NCRHA En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment,” he points out in an of­fi­cial re­lease.

Mr Thomas added: “This achieve­ment is a sign­post of the ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence of the staff of the NCRHA. We will press for­ward; we will con­tin­ue to im­prove; this is who we are.”

The com­mis­sion­ing of this new step-down / tran­si­tion fa­cil­i­ty, for the treat­ment of COVID-19 pa­tients comes on the heels of Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to de­com­mis­sion fa­cil­i­ties at Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment in San­gre Grande and at Camp Ba­lan­dra. 

The use of those two fa­cil­i­ties over the past six months re­port­ed­ly has cost Gov­ern­ment some $831,005 in to­tal—Brook­lyn cost $511,005; while Ba­lan­dra cost $320,000.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh had in­di­cat­ed in an of­fi­cial state­ment this week that the de­ci­sion was in­flu­enced by the in­tro­duc­tion of home iso­la­tion for low-risk COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients, as well as the open­ing of a new par­al­lel health­care fa­cil­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) in Val­sayn.