Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says even with the jump in nov­el Coro­n­avirus cas­es from nine to 49, there is no drain on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­ist­ing health­care sys­tem.

“But it can all col­lapse to­mor­row if cer­tain mem­bers of the pub­lic and cer­tain groups con­tin­ue to be­have ir­re­spon­si­bly. This is a hard-won game,” Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day at a press con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain min­istry, where he an­nounced more mea­sures to deal with the spread of the virus.

Deyals­ingh said that some­thing as sim­ple as the church in cen­tral Trinidad that was con­tin­u­ing to have gath­er­ings could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the en­tire med­ical sys­tem.

“What you will get is com­mu­ni­ty spread and thou­sands of peo­ple will de­scend in­to the health care sys­tem. We do not want to reach there,” he said.

Deyals­ingh ap­pealed to own­ers of all spaces where peo­ple con­gre­gate to pro­tect their mem­bers and the coun­try.

He said that the COVID-19 hot­line, 877-WELL, was al­so on-stream and manned by 10 doc­tors to take calls about the virus.

“It is to deal with ques­tions about COVID-19 on­ly,” he said.

Deyals­ingh urged cit­i­zens to leave the line open for old­er peo­ple who may not be as tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy and need to speak with some­one for guid­ance.

The Min­is­ter al­so gave some de­tails on the time­line of the 40 new pa­tients who test­ed pos­i­tive while they were in quar­an­tine in Ba­lan­dra af­ter ar­riv­ing home on Wednes­day from Guade­loupe.

“On Thurs­day 19 March, all 68 peo­ple were swabbed as per pro­to­col, be­cause they fit the de­f­i­n­i­tion of who had to be swabbed be­cause they were aboard the ship with con­firmed COVID-19 pa­tients,” Deyals­ingh said.

“We got the re­sults be­tween 9 and 10 pm last night (Fri­day). I could tell you that of the 68 peo­ple test­ed, 40 of the 68 have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. Those are the facts.”

He said that the group of Trinida­di­ans left this coun­try to go on a cruise on March 5.

“This is af­ter a month of ask­ing peo­ple to lim­it trav­el. They sub­se­quent­ly be­came strand­ed and as cit­i­zens of T&T, they re­turned on March 17 and were tak­en to a quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty, as was the pro­to­col. By March 16, they had re­tained Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj,” he said.

“Be that as it may, the health sys­tem con­tin­ued to re­spond in a most re­spon­si­ble man­ner, in a most ef­fec­tive man­ner, in a most hu­mane man­ner, by pro­vid­ing that fa­cil­i­ty that was out­fit­ted for them to have as com­fort­able a stay as pos­si­ble.”

When pressed about the de­tails of the le­gal let­ter, Deyals­ingh said he would leave it for At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi to dis­cuss.