Ministry: Covid19 testing to be increased as Trinidad and Tobago reopen

HEALTH Minister Terrence Deyalsingh and Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram said covid19 testing will be increased as TT reopens its economy and opens itself to the risk of a new spread of the virus. At a virtual health press conference on Monday, Deyalsingh said, "Testing will continue. All the community testing will continue. We have never stopped it."

But Deyalsingh added, "The baton has now been passed to the population as we open up."

Deyalsingh explained the success of public health measures such as wearing masks, physical and social distancing speak to "the responsibility of the average citizen, store owner, mall owner. doubles vendor, gyros vendor, NLCB operator, all of that."

Using public transport as an example, Deyalsingh said, "Whether it's a CAL plane taking you to Tobago, a taxi or a maxi taxi where you can't social distance, what you can then do is make sure that you have a mask, make sure that you sanitise. It is situation specific."

He reiterated that the measures are inexpensive and save people "a lot of pain and suffering."

Parasram said, "We are building our capacity with our testing as the days move forward and we want to ramp up our community testing."

He added an increase in community testing was important because of the risk of spreading covid19 "as more and more people begin to move."

Parsaram said the ministry has the ability to test up to 15 different viruses "to see what we have in the population and we will be doing so over the next couple weeks."

He said the Trinidad Public Health Laboratory received a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machine from the International Atomic Energy Agency last week. He said the Health Ministry personnel who run the lab will be trained by Caribbean Public Health Agency to use this machine and the site should be "up and running within the shortest possible time." Parsaram said Tobago received its PCR machine and test kits last weekend. He said, on Tuesday, the ministry would send a team "just to continue and finalise the training with Tobago so we can have that up and running in the quickest period of time."

Reiterating that schools will reopen in September, Parasram said, "As soon as we open schools – whether we open it in the Easter term, whether we open it in September – every year there is a spike in viral illnesses."

He explained all the data at the ministry shows that it happens "because of congregation of children, not able to properly social distance."

Parasram said any virus can spread "quite quickly in those environments and then we take it back home and it spreads throughout the population."

He also said six people on the Enchantment of the Seas cruise ship who tested covid19 positive had been removed from the ship and are at Caura Hospital. Parsaram said tests are being done on the other 295 people on the ship to ensure they are not covid19 positive.