A con­tact trac­ing un­der­tak­en on one of the coun­try’s nine com­firmed COVID-19 cas­es has re­vealed that the in­di­vid­ual had con­tact with 66 peo­ple while car­ry­ing the virus.

The in­for­ma­tion was re­vealed by chief med­ical of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­ter, St Ann’s.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, who ad­dressed the me­dia on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, mean­while said there was a feel­ing by the pub­lic that his min­istry was hid­ing in­for­ma­tion about the virus by re­leas­ing the up­dates late at nights, which “was an­noy­ing the me­dia.” As a re­sult, he said his min­istry has tak­en a po­si­tion to pro­vide the me­dia with up­dates on the num­ber of con­firmed cas­es at 10 am and 4 pm dai­ly.

Paras­ram then in­ter­vened, say­ing, “I think we would have giv­en out too much, to be hon­est. We are walk­ing a thin line when we are deal­ing with per­sons who are ill.”

He said the on­ly per­son who should be is­sued in­for­ma­tion on a pa­tient is the pa­tient him/her­self and their di­rect rel­a­tives.

He said the de­tails the min­istry shared to the me­dia about the con­firmed cas­es has been suf­fi­cient.

So far, Paras­ram said 150 tests were done on in­di­vid­u­als who dis­played symp­toms of the virus, with nine peo­ple test­ing pos­i­tive. He said con­tact trac­ing un­der­tak­en on one of con­firmed cas­es al­so showed that the per­son had come in­to con­tact with 66 peo­ple.