COVID-19 in Trinidad & Tobago (Local Updates & Discussions Only)

[redmanjp]

If there is a confirmed case in Venezuela, that's when we need to panic. They don't have the facilities to treat a grazed knee, you think they have infrastructure to contain and control Covid-19? They'll have 1,000 cases before anyone figures out it's there. And we give out free health care to every migrant.

And those in authority are bump gum to "show" they working for their salary but nothing substantial behind the talk. "Fake it 'till you make it" should be on the coat of arms.

there isn't going to be a confirmed case if there aren't even testing for it- for all we know it there already and d next vene who coming in wit it do so illegally where there is no screening whatsoever

[redmanjp]

70% of 600 people in a church without symptoms test positive so actual number could be way higher as most countries not bothering to test ppl without symptoms- that includes the US

[aaron17]

if you have coronavirus, do not go to a public hospital.

you will spread the infection and many, many patients in the hospital will die.

What about going by a doctor first?

there is no treatment or cure for coronavirus. there is no point of care testing for coronavirus. If you go by a doctor, they cannot help you. They will give you panadol and tell you to stay home.

If it develops seriously in pneumonia (difficulty breathing), I would get someone to call a doctor over the phone, explain the severity of symptoms and either have a house visit or ministry of health visit. The bed in the Caura hospital would be prepared and waiting with appropriate personnel, equipment and precautions.

Oh thanks...this info need to be pushed out

[adnj]

Treatment

There is no specific antiviral treatment recommended for COVID-19. People with COVID-19 should receive supportive care to help relieve symptoms. For severe cases, treatment should include care to support vital organ functions.

People who think they may have been exposed to COVID-19 should contact their healthcare provider immediately.

[URL]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention-treatment.html
[/URL]

if you have coronavirus, do not go to a public hospital.

you will spread the infection and many, many patients in the hospital will die.

What about going by a doctor first?

there is no treatment or cure for coronavirus. there is no point of care testing for coronavirus. If you go by a doctor, they cannot help you. They will give you panadol and tell you to stay home.

If it develops seriously in pneumonia (difficulty breathing), I would get someone to call a doctor over the phone, explain the severity of symptoms and either have a house visit or ministry of health visit. The bed in the Caura hospital would be prepared and waiting with appropriate personnel, equipment and precautions.

Oh thanks...this info need to be pushed out

[Ben_spanna]

Possible outbreak at a nursing facility in Washington.....

[paid_influencer]

just receive a package from amazon- i spray it with some lysol. not taking chances in case it have unknown clusters in Miami including the freight forwarders

current guidance is to open the package outside your home and let the contents air out. Also do not pop the bubble wrap (most of that is produced in china as well).

[hydroep]

New countries confirming cases: Qatar, Ecuador, Luxembourg, Ireland...

[fireworks]

70% of 600 people in a church without symptoms test positive

In Daegu, Korea. 1900 Shincheonji Church members have been tested for coronavirus.

1300 had flu like symptoms & 600 did not.

Among those 1300 with flu like symptoms, 87.5% were confirmed with the corona virus .

BUT out of the 600 WITHOUT symptoms, 70% were confirmed with coronavirus.

[Slartibartfast]

For anyone else still thinking this is not serious. There had just been the first case of someone getting reinfected with COVID-19. Normally you can't get reinfected with a virus because your body has already developed the antibody for it.

I wonder if this is a mutation of the original virus. I honestly have no idea how these things work.

this virus sounding more and more like a bioweapon- spreading fast, even without symptoms so u doh know, long incubation rate and high fatality rate and now reinfection

It does, but you would have to be very foolish to release this on purpose with the risk of it travelling around the world and getting back to your country.

[adnj]

The FDA just approved a drug to treat smallpox in case of a bioterrorism attack — here’s why that scenario is so scary

July 2018

The FDA just approved a drug that could be used to treat smallpox.

The disease was officially eradicated in 1980, but experts are concerned that people could re-create smallpox and use it as a biological weapon.

Infectious disease researchers and bioterror experts say the world is unprepared for the emergence or release of a pandemic disease.


On any list of the most devastating diseases humanity has ever had to contend with, smallpox comes in near the top.

The contagious and potentially fatal disease is caused by the variola virus. It killed approximately 300 million people before mass vaccination campaigns made smallpox the first infectious disease to be eradicated from the wild in 1980.

But that doesn't mean it's gone for good.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on July 13 that it had for the first time approved a drug that could treat smallpox if it were ever released as a weapon in a terrorist attack. The medication is called TPOXX (tecovirimat). 

"To address the risk of bioterrorism, Congress has taken steps to enable the development and approval of countermeasures to thwart pathogens that could be employed as weapons," FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. "Today's approval provides an important milestone in these efforts. This new treatment affords us an additional option should smallpox ever be used as a bioweapon."

The potential release of smallpox as a weapon is an extremely concerning scenario; many experts think that a weaponized form of disease is one of the biggest risks humanity faces.

The world isn't ready for that possibility, nor is it primed to respond to a pandemic disease that occurs naturally. That means it's plausible that some sort of deadly pathogen — likely a virus — could spread around the globe.

[URL] https://www.businessinsider.com/fda-app ... ism-2018-7
[/URL]

For anyone else still thinking this is not serious. There had just been the first case of someone getting reinfected with COVID-19. Normally you can't get reinfected with a virus because your body has already developed the antibody for it.

I wonder if this is a mutation of the original virus. I honestly have no idea how these things work.

this virus sounding more and more like a bioweapon- spreading fast, even without symptoms so u doh know, long incubation rate and high fatality rate and now reinfection

It does, but you would have to be very foolish to release this on purpose with the risk of it travelling around the world and getting back to your country.

[adnj]

Gunnison, Colorado: the town that dodged the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic

A century on, what can we learn from how US mountain community dealt with viral outbreak

Sun 1 Mar 2020 08.00 GMT

“Gunnison’s management of the influenza situation, one hallmarked by the application of protective sequestration, is particularly impressive when one considers that nearly every nearby town and county was severely affected by the pandemic,” the University of Michigan Medical School said in a 2006 report for the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency. “The town of Gunnison was exceptional.”

Now it is the turn of coronavirus to race around the world, rattling governments and stock markets and prompting a desperate scramble to contain and control. Tourists stuck in Spanish hotels, Italian streets eerily empty, schools shuttered in Japan, pilgrimages to Islam’s holiest sites banned, international sporting fixtures suspended – a multiplying list of measures amid confusion over how to respond.

The experience of a small town in the Rockies at the end of the first world war does not provide a failsafe blueprint for a different disease in a far more populous, and far more interconnected era. It does however offer tantalising nuggets about about eluding a cataclysm that infected about a third of the global population and killed between 50 million and 100 million people.

Dr FP Hanson, the county physician, took a leading role. “An epidemic, terrible in proportions and resultant deaths, is sweeping over the country,” he wrote. “I have caused a strict quarantine to be placed on Gunnison county against the world. Barricades and fences have been erected on all main highways near the county lines.”

Lanterns and signs warned motorists to drive straight through or submit to quarantine. Train passengers who disembarked were quarantined. “Any person may leave the county at his will; none may return except those who will go into voluntary quarantine,” said Hanson. Any violators would be be “dealt with to the fullest extent of the law, and to this we promise our personal attention”, he added.

[URL]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/01/gunnison-colorado-the-town-that-dodged-the-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic
[/URL]

[paid_influencer]

correct hand washing technique:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IisgnbMfKvI

[aaron17]

*Closes tap
Back to normal

[fokhan_96]

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article240781521.html
It's getting closer...

[paid_influencer]

it's probably already here. We had Carnival last week with a large influx of tourists from all over.

We haven't had a confirmed case yet because we only tested a handful of people.

[adnj]

FDA Expands Coronavirus Testing After CDC Glitches Undermine Fight Against Disease

Testing logjam is keeping vital information from patients and health officials.

03/01/2020 12:08 AM ET

Glitches in the CDC testing system have thwarted wide-ranging surveillance testing to track the disease and eliminate concerns about healthy people simply battling a common cold.

China currently has the capability to test 1.6 million people a week for COVID-19, and South Korea has already tested some 65,000 people, reported Science Magazine. As of Friday, fewer than 500 people in the U.S. had been tested, according to the CDC.

The CDC ignored World Health Organization testing guidelines to devise its own test. But several testing kits sent to states had inconclusive results, so most states had to rely on CDC analysis, creating a backlog, ProPublica reported.

“We’re weeks behind because we had this problem,” Scott Becker, chief executive officer of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told ProPublica. “We’re usually up-front and center and ready.”

The CDC until recently also restricted use of the kits to suspected cases of COVID-19 among people who had traveled to China within two weeks of developing symptoms or who had been in close contact with someone with the illness.

[URL]https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cdc-fda-coronavirus-testing-covid-19_n_5e5b13fbc5b6450a30bfb075
[/URL]

[wickedtuna]

https://www.stlucianewsonline.com/break ... nt-martin/

[wickedtuna]

https://www.stlucianewsonline.com/breaking-news-three-cases-of-coronavirus-confirmed-in-st-barthelemy-saint-martin/

Wrong article loaded

[K74T]

http://www.looptt.com/content/dominican-republic-guadeloupe-report-caribbean-virus-cases

Dominican Republic and Guadeloupe

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

I saw a woman saying today how God is a Trini and we don't have to worry.

[Kenjo]

I saw a woman saying today how God is a Trini and we don't have to worry.

K

[paid_influencer]

I saw a woman saying today how God is a Trini and we don't have to worry.

lots of people irrationally confident in our public health capacity, too.

Coronavirus will open the Couva hospital, because it could not have been opened before.

[redmanjp]

There will likely be a run to buy masks, lysol hand sanitizer, etc soon and certainly when the first case in T&T is reported. So ppl stock up now.

We should compile a list of places with the masks as that is not as prevalent as the other items.

[adnj]

There will likely be a run to buy masks, lysol hand sanitizer, etc soon and certainly when the first case in T&T is reported. So ppl stock up now.

We should compile a list of places with the masks as that is not as prevalent as the other items.

Most of the stores that I've seen are already sold out of both.

[sMASH]

I saw a woman saying today how God is a Trini and we don't have to worry.

k

[sMASH]

how does public transportation have to function now with this thing nearing our doorsteps? to be trapped in a closed up space with so much trini.

[redmanjp]

how does public transportation have to function now with this thing nearing our doorsteps? to be trapped in a closed up space with so much trini.

Masks plus alcohol wipes or hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol

Natural window ventilation was recommended vs A.C. during the H1N1 pandemic.

There needs to be a major stake holder meeting with Govt, maxi and taxi associations businesses including bars and restaurants schools, churches and religious organisations etc. Feel free to add to the list. I say this because my workplace (a govt office) currently doesn't have soap in the bathroom; just went to KFC in Arima they didn't either and d place not looking sanitary.
Everyone needs to be involved in fighting this thing before it even come here because it spreading fast. And unlike swine flu with a fatality rate of .1% will kill 2% which is 20 times more. If 40 ppl die from the flu so far if/when this become just as widespread it will kill 800! Perhaps more cuz hospitals with become overwhelmed by the time it hit even 100.

[hydroep]

Washroom hygiene is a major concern.

The virus is present in both urine and feces and apparently when you flush the water atomizes which means it can become airborne and contaminate surfaces...

[sMASH]

how does public transportation have to function now with this thing nearing our doorsteps? to be trapped in a closed up space with so much trini.

Masks plus alcohol wipes or hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol

Natural window ventilation was recommended vs A.C. during the H1N1 pandemic.

There needs to be a major stake holder meeting with Govt, maxi and taxi associations businesses including bars and restaurants schools, churches and religious organisations etc. Feel free to add to the list.
Everyone needs to be involved in fighting this thing before it even come here because it spreading fast. And unlike swine flu with a fatality rate of .1% will kill 2% which is 20 times more. If 40 ppl die from the flu so far if/when this become just as widespread it will kill 800! Perhaps more cuz hospitals with become overwhelmed by the time it hit even 100.

thats a great idea there. cause this weather, tough to go without ac...

[redmanjp]

14 or 24 day incubation period?

https://trinidadexpress.com/news/local/deyalsingh-we-will-be-responsible/article_9b613aca-5a99-11ea-ba77-c31e42fb886a.html

Deyalsingh: We will be responsible
Ria Taitt Feb 28, 2020
1 min to read
Ria Taitt
Ria Taitt
Terrence Deyalsingh---use
Heealth Minister: Terrence Deyalsingh.


Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh says if the World Health Organisation (WHO) amends the incubation period for the coronavirus (COVID-19) from 14 to 24 days, the Government would do the responsible thing.

He was responding to a question in the House of Representatives yesterday from Caroni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh, who noted that although the incubation period spoken of by WHO was nine to 14 days, recent findings are that the incubation period could be 24 days.

Gopeesingh asked whether the Government was reconsidering its policy on the 14-day travel ban for people coming from certain countries, in accordance with these findings.

Deyalsingh said he had seen no definite source of material that has been “confirmed” and “which says conclusively that the incubation period is 24 days”.

“If you have it, make it available. We stand right now at 14 days. We will adhere to the WHO guidelines. And if the incubation period is deemed to be more than 14 days, the Government will act responsibly and do what is in the best interest of every single citizen of Trinidad and Tobago,” said the minister.

“This is not a matter for political grandstanding. This is a matter for all of us to come together and show the world that we can fight a common enemy without political rancour. Let us stand together and face this unseen invisible common enemy to Trinidad and Tobago,” he added.

Deyalsingh gave a statement to the House in which he said the Health Ministry was conducting an audit of equipment and supplies at the Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility which would be required in the event of a serious outbreak of the coronavirus in T&T.

He said the ministry was ­examining the requirements for a 230-bed isolation unit/­quarantine facility at Couva Hospital, and plans had already been put in place for speedy implementation.

Deyalsingh also reiterated statements made at Thursday’s post-Cabinet news conference about the travel ban and the level of preparedness at Caura (24-bed facility) and St James Infirmary (85-bed facility).

He again gave the assurance the technocrats at the Ministry of Health would keep the popu­lation “continuously ­informed and updated with rele­vant information concerning ­COVID-19”.