The Min­istry of Health has pro­vid­ed fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion con­cern­ing the six con­firmed cas­es of the Delta Vari­ant of COVID-19.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment re­leased to­day, the Min­istry out­lines the pro­to­cols em­ployed when re­turn­ing na­tion­als present as pos­i­tive with COVID-19.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the Min­istry’s state­ment…

Cor­rec­tion on Sta­tus of Con­firmed COVID-19 Delta Cas­es

Port of Spain, 7th Sep­tem­ber, 2020: The Min­istry of Health wish­es to clar­i­fy in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main con­cern­ing the vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus of con­firmed COVID-19 Delta cas­es.

The pub­lic is ad­vised that of the 6 con­firmed COVID-19 Delta cas­es, 4 were un­vac­ci­nat­ed and 2 were con­sid­ered ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. As per ex­ist­ing quar­an­tine pro­to­cols, all per­sons pro­vid­ed neg­a­tive PCR tests (which were tak­en 72-hours pri­or to ar­rival).

The 4 un­vac­ci­nat­ed cas­es were placed in state su­per­vised quar­an­tine im­me­di­ate­ly up­on ar­rival to Trinidad, ac­cord­ing to the na­tion­al Quar­an­tine Pro­to­cols for Pas­sen­gers En­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go. The 2 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed in­di­vid­u­als would have been placed in iso­la­tion as soon as the pos­i­tive COVID-19 test re­sult was re­ceived (pri­or to con­fir­ma­tion of the COVID-19 Delta Vari­ant of Con­cern).

The pa­tients are placed in iso­la­tion un­til they met the en­hanced dis­charge cri­te­ria for per­sons with COVID-19 Vari­ants of Con­cern.

This pro­to­col in­cludes the iso­la­tion and test­ing of the pos­i­tive case and quar­an­ti­ning and test­ing of all known con­tacts. The per­sons con­tin­ue to be un­der the close sur­veil­lance of the rel­e­vant Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health.

The pub­lic is al­so ad­vised that while se­quenc­ing for vari­ants of con­cern can take 2 to 3 weeks, the re­quired pro­to­cols are im­me­di­ate­ly put in place for all pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es with the rel­e­vant trav­el his­to­ry, in­clud­ing the 2 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed Delta vari­ant cas­es.

We take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind all mem­bers of the pub­lic that, if they ex­pe­ri­ence any of the symp­toms of COVID-19, that they should present to the near­est health fa­cil­i­ty for test­ing. This is es­pe­cial­ly true for those who have re­turned from trav­el with­in a two-week time­frame.