CARPHA to help Tobago with covid19 safety

The Caribbean Public Health Agency will be doing online training on December 1, from 2 pm, for Tobago's tourism stakeholders,

The session is in collaboration with the Tobago House of Assembly, the Ministry of Health and the Tobago Tourism Agency Ltd (TTAL).

The training will focus on covid19 health guidelines for reopening the tourism sector for the safety of all staff and visitors during their stay.

Tobago’s acting County Medical Officer of Health Dr Tiffany Hoyte made the announcement on Friday during TTAL’s virtual panel discussion.

Hoyte said this training for stakeholders will ensure covid19 protective measures are implemented correctly.

In her presentation, Hoyte said although temperature checks are done by almost every establishment, it’s not a strong preventative measure. Business owners must also focus on providing proper PPE for their staff and develop effective protocols and policies.

“Even the best plans may have shortcomings of things you just didn’t think of. So the key is to be able to adapt to new things."

She added, “Doing the temperature checks is a very weak type of monitoring. I’m not saying it's completely useless, I’m saying a lot of people who have been infected may not show symptoms.”

Hoyte said, 75 per cent of the covid19 patients in Tobago displayed symptoms.

“But of the three quarters that had symptoms, less than five per cent had a fever.

“If you think you’re going to pick up a fever you are putting your eggs in an insecure place. And people are just checking temperature without knowing what they are looking for.

“When we first started seeing cases, businesses would have put measures in place for customers to sanitise and they put a guard there to ensure customers sanitise. Now people have become complacent and there’s nobody monitoring. Now it’s just not a matter of putting things in place.”