The Min­istry of Health has con­firmed the coun­try's first case of the high­ly in­fec­tious UK vari­ant of COVID-19 (Vari­ant B117). The strain was found in a repa­tri­at­ed na­tion­al who re­cent­ly re­turned from the UK.
"The pres­ence of the vari­ant was con­firmed via a gene se­quenc­ing study at the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, which has been test­ing COVID-19 pos­i­tive sam­ples col­lect­ed since Sep­tem­ber 2020," a re­lease from the Min­istry stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry, all COVID-19 pro­to­cols were fol­lowed to pre­vent the strain's in­tro­duc­tion in­to the pop­u­la­tion in­clud­ing a neg­a­tive PCR test which was tak­en 72-hours pri­or to the pa­tient's de­par­ture from the Unit­ed King­dom.

 "Up­on ar­rival in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the na­tion­al was im­me­di­ate­ly placed in state quar­an­tine, in a sin­gle room. The pa­tient was trans­ferred di­rect­ly to an iso­la­tion area at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty once the pos­i­tive COVID-19 re­sult was con­firmed."

The Min­istry has in­creased its quar­an­tine pro­to­col for trav­ellers com­ing in­to T&T with­in 14 days of leav­ing the UK and the manda­to­ry quar­an­tine pe­ri­od up­on ar­rival in the coun­try has been in­creased from sev­en days to 14.
The COVID-19 vari­ant. which was iden­ti­fied by UK sci­en­tists last month, was re­spon­si­ble for height­ened lock­downs in the Unit­ed King­dom.

There is no ev­i­dence that the strain is more dead­ly, how­ev­er, ex­perts be­lieve it is at least 50 per cent more trans­mis­si­ble—spread­ing more eas­i­ly from per­son to per­son. It is one of three strains cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of ex­perts glob­al­ly along with South Africa and Brazil­ian vari­ants.

Re­porter: Rishard Khan