New COVID-19 measures for Trinidad and Tobago

Police were continuing their search  on Wednesday for three Venezuelan teenagers, who fled from quarantine at the Canada Hall of the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI)  earlier this week, as the health authorities announced new measures to deal with patients suffering from the coronavirus (COVID-19).

The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) described the teenagers, aged 14, 15 and 17 as “persons of interest’ saying that the three broke quarantine sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning.

The police statement said that a nurse at the quarantine facility reported that between 8.00 am and 12 noon (local time) on Tuesday, the three minors failed to report for breakfast.

“Checks revealed they were missing, the police said, adding “members of the public are reminded that Breach of Quarantine is an offence and persons who have knowledge of the teens’ whereabouts and giving them refuge, can be charged with aiding and abetting in an offence”.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health said it is changing its discharge policy for COVID-19 patients and that home quarantine will now be used in treating new cases and discharging patients.

Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Roshan Parasram said in addition, patients will no longer be asked to produce two negative tests before being discharged.

“The discharge from our step-down facilities as you would have noted about a week ago, we took a decision to go down to one negative swab upon discharge. That has been further updated. We are going to do a clinical criteria for discharge which is recommended by WHO. So there is no diagnostic criteria so you won’t be getting a negative swab upon discharge,” he told the Wednesday briefing by the Ministry of Health.

The health authorities said that as a result, asymptomatic and symptomatic patients will now be asked to quarantine at home for seven days.

Dr. Parasram told reporters that symptomatic patients would be asked to spend10 days from the onset of displaying symptoms in a state facility, three days without symptoms in the facility and a further seven days at home.

Asymptomatic patients will now spend 10 days in a facility from the onset of a positive result, and seven days at home. The seven day at home quarantine will be mandated by a quarantine order.

“So the first category for symptomatic persons, if you spend 10 days from the date of onset of your symptoms, plus three days with no symptoms at all, we will discharge you to your home, giving you a quarantine order that you stay for a further seven days at your home without a diagnostic test being done. You can be assured after that period that you won’t be able to transmit the virus to anyone else.”

Dr. Parasram said the admission of new cases into the hospital setting will be reduced to reserve bed space for the moderate to severely ill patients.

He said County Medical Officers of Health (CMOH) would now oversee the monitoring positive cases who are quarantining at home in conjunction with the TTPS.

“What is going to happen is the CMOH offices will have a list of all the positive persons in the country and they will call those individuals twice a day and do interviews to determine signs and symptoms like if it has worsened, if it is better, if it has stayed the same. They will also ask you about your household, if the persons in your household have any signs and symptoms of disease. If they do, we can send someone out and have those persons swabbed to see if they are positive or negative as well.”

“In terms of the persons from high risk groups, persons who are moderately or severely ill and experiencing difficulty in breathing, vomiting, lethargy, very tired, those persons will be picked up by the CMOH.

“We will call the ambulance and get you either to Caura or Couva (hospitals) in the first instance. If of course in between those calls persons have worsening symptoms you can take yourselves to any of the emergency departments or call the service on your own. The hotlines are also available to call at any point in time.” he said.

Latest figures released by the Ministry of Health show that 1,384 persons have tested positive for the virus with there being 1,177 active cases.

There have been 15 deaths associated with the virus that was first detected in China last December.