Trinidad's Health Minister blames birthday parties on COVID-related death
Published:Saturday | December 12, 2020 | 6:37 PMCMC
(CMC)- Trinidad and Tobago's health minister, Terrence Deyalsingh, today, criticised persons who attended three birthday parties in Tobago resulting in one death and numerous other positive cases of COVID-19.
Speaking at a news conference, Deyalsingh said that 11 people had tested positive for the disease as a result of the parties.
"Tobago is seeing, in our view, a disturbing and significant upsurge in cases. And the contact tracing has revealed a very disturbing series of events that took place in Tobago with the help of people from Trinidad,” Deyalsingh said, noting that there were birthday parties in Tobago on November 22, which led to five COVID-19 cases and one death.
He said on November 28, there was another birthday party leading to five more cases, and another on December 8, which led to one COVID-19 case.
“We have been advising the population not to have gatherings out of your immediate family. We are concerned about what is happening in Tobago. We stand ready to support the Tobago Regional Health Authority,” the Health Minister said.
Nineteen new cases
Meanwhile, the health authorities said that 19 new cases of the virus were detected from samples taken between December 8 and 10. Of these, one was a recently repatriated person.
In its latest bulletin, the Ministry of Health said that there are 627 active cases, six people have been discharged from public health facilities and there are 27 newly recovered community cases.
It said that there was no new death with the total remaining at 122.
Of the 6,852 cases since March, 6, 103 have recovered.
According to the authorities 46 people are in hospital and 26 patients are in step-down facilities. There are 338 people in state quarantine facilities, and 536 people in home self-isolation, 177 of whom are in the prison system.
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