CMO: Community testing facilities up and running

Eight health facilities have been designated to do covid19 community testing in Trinidad. Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Roshan Parasram made the announcement at Wednesday’s virtual media conference.

The facilities are St James Health Centre (St James District Health Facility) within the St George West district; El Socorro Health Centre in St George Central; St Joseph Enhanced Health Centre in St George East; Chaguanas A&E in County Caroni; Mayaro District Health Facility in Nariva/Mayaro; Siparia Health Centre in St Patrick County; Sangre Grande Enhanced Health Centre in St Andrew/St David; and Pleasantville in Victoria County.

Parasram said the clinical criteria to be used for testing people who go to the facilities between 8 am and 4 pm will include fever, cough, runny nose, headaches, redness of the eyes, loss of taste and loss of smell. He said swabbing will not be considered at these centres for asymptomatic who have come for pre-delivery screening, pre-surgical screening and screening prior to repatriation.

The CMO said 551 people remain quarantined with 24 at Caura hospital,142 at Couva hospital, 42 at the UWI Penal/Debe campus, 19 at Chancellor hotel, Port of Spain (PoS), 40 at National Racquet Centre, Tacarigua, six at NAPA, PoS, 32 at the Brooklyn facility, Sangre Grande, 42 at Camp Balandra, Balandra, 45 at UWI Freedom Hall, St Augustine, 48 at Kapok hotel, PoS, two at Cascadia hotel, PoS, 94 at the Maersk developer rig off the East Coast, and 15 at Vision on a Mission at Claxton Bay.

Responding to a question about crowded conditions at the Balandra facility, the CMO said this facility was one of those housing returnees who had been decanted from the Enchantment of the Seas. He said he would check with his team to see if the reports were true and this would be fixed. He said the returnees would be swabbed on Friday and discharged on Sunday if all went well.

He said there have been 5,089 tests, of which 3,996 were unique and 1,093 were repeated. There were 1,840 community tests carried out. The number of positive cases was 130 and there had been 115 discharges, as the first six passengers to have tested positive from the Enchantment of the Seas cruise ship were sent home from Caura hospital after two subsequent negative tests.