An­na-Lisa Paul

One day af­ter Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed this coun­try had record­ed its’ first COVID-19 case, of­fi­cials went rel­a­tive­ly silent on pro­vid­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion and up­dates to the na­tion.

This de­spite the fear build­ing that has seen mem­bers of the pub­lic con­tin­u­ing to flock to gro­ceries and phar­ma­cies to stock up on emer­gency sup­plies.

Sev­er­al calls to the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram yes­ter­day went unan­swered, while Deyals­ingh ad­vised Guardian Me­dia to seek an­swers from the min­istry’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit.

Mean­while, med­ical sources claimed the pa­tient who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 re­mained iso­lat­ed at the Cau­ra Health Fa­cil­i­ty up to late yes­ter­day.

On Thurs­day, Caribbean Air­lines al­so an­nounced that 13 crew mem­bers had been self-iso­lat­ed fol­low­ing re­ports that a 52-year-old Guyanese woman who lat­er died from the virus had trav­elled on flight BW521 from the John F Kennedy Air­port, New York en route to Guyana on March 7.

Yes­ter­day, Uni­com­er (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed con­firmed that one of its staff mem­bers based at their Freeport lo­ca­tion had been on board the flight.

In a re­lease, the com­pa­ny said, “Our col­league, who showed no symp­toms to date of the virus and has not been con­tact­ed by Caribbean Air­lines nor pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties, has gone in­to self-iso­la­tion.

“As a pre­cau­tion, Uni­com­er (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed closed its Freeport Cam­pus on Fri­day 14th March, 2020, to al­low for com­plete sani­ti­sa­tion of the premis­es.”

And even as T&T con­tin­ues to bat­tle the fall-out fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of its first con­firmed case of COVID-19, the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day con­firmed six new cas­es – bring­ing their to­tal num­ber of con­firmed cas­es to eight.

Among the new cas­es are two males, aged 63 and 67, who ar­rived on March 7 from Trinidad hav­ing trav­elled through Malaysia via Dublin and Lon­don. The two men pre­sent­ed at the hos­pi­tal on March 11. An­oth­er male, aged 36, trav­elled from Man­ches­ter, Eng­land. He was tak­en to hos­pi­tal from his ho­tel via am­bu­lance on March 11. A 31-year-old man who works on a ship abroad and ar­rived in Ja­maica from the Ca­nary Is­lands via Por­tu­gal and Mi­a­mi on Feb­ru­ary 25 al­so pre­sent­ed with symp­toms on March 10.

Mean­while, the 58-year-old fa­ther of the first pa­tient con­firmed with the virus in Ja­maica was dis­cov­ered ill at home on March 11. He has since been hos­pi­talised.

And a fe­male rel­a­tive, 34 – al­so re­lat­ed to the first pa­tient, has been con­firmed with the virus.