Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s COVID-19 tal­ly rose above 400 yes­ter­day with con­fir­ma­tion of 78 cas­es com­ing an­nounced by the Min­istry of Health.

The Min­istry an­nounced 43 cas­es in its 10 am up­date and an­oth­er 35 in its 6 pm up­date.

It said the 78 cas­es were the re­sults from tests tak­en be­tween Au­gust 5 and yes­ter­day.

Of these re­cent cas­es, 45 were “pend­ing epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion”, 32 were con­tacts of re­cent­ly pos­i­tive pa­tients and one per­son was from a test con­duct­ed at a pri­vate lab.

Yes­ter­day’s fig­ures brought the to­tal num­ber of pos­i­tive cas­es in the coun­try to 404 with 257 ac­tive cas­es.

The num­ber of deaths re­mained at eight while 139 pa­tients have been dis­charged.

Yes­ter­day’s fig­ure was the largest num­ber of cas­es an­nounced in one day.

Pro­to­col dic­tates that all pos­i­tive cas­es be put im­me­di­ate­ly in­to hos­pi­tals des­ig­nat­ed for COVID-19 care with­in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem. These are cur­rent­ly the Cou­va and Cau­ra hos­pi­tals which have a ca­pac­i­ty of 175 and 100 beds re­spec­tive­ly.

The num­bers come on the heels of the an­nounce­ment that the Min­istry of Health is at­tempt­ing to de­cant as many pa­tients as pos­si­ble in­to step-down fa­cil­i­ties in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a spike in COVID-19 cas­es an­tic­i­pat­ed to oc­cur in the com­ing days and weeks. Vi­rol­o­gist Dr Christo­pher Oura be­lieves this spike will oc­cur by this week­end, some five to sev­en days af­ter the Gen­er­al Elec­tion which saw a num­ber of large gath­er­ings and sev­er­al peo­ple dis­re­gard­ing the pub­lic health guide­lines.

Bar­ring these new cas­es, oc­cu­pan­cy at the Cou­va hos­pi­tal is ex­pect­ed to be at 21 per cent with 37 pa­tients and be­tween nine and 14 per cent at Cau­ra with be­tween nine and 14 pa­tients.