By Pamela Ramcharan
STUDENTS and teachers who returned to the Maraval Roman Catholic School this week, along with their household family members will be placed on a 14-day quarantine.
This was revealed by Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram during the Health Ministry’s virtual media conference on Saturday.
It came after confirmation that one of the last five persons to test positive for Covid-19 is a pupil who returned to school on Monday.
Parasram said, “Those five additional positives were directly linked, they’re primary contacts in the households of case #142 so all the way up to #147, all six cases are from the same household and linked to the same source.”
He added, “With regards to case 142, as I said, all primary household contacts all five persons are now positive and this includes three children, the minister alluded to one child who attended the RC school and that school has since been closed.
“The community surveillance continues especially to monitor secondary and tertiary contacts and so now that this child is positive, those persons; students, teachers, etc, in that school will be considered primary contacts and as such, all of the primary contacts in addition to their contacts, for instance, their parents, their siblings, will now be placed in home quarantine for a period of 14 days and be followed up rigorously with monitoring and evaluation for signs and symptoms.”
He added, “The assistance of the TTPS is being afforded to us to ensure that those persons abide by the home quarantine laws so they will be followed for 14 days and swabbed as required again.”
Parasram said, “In terms of numbers we have 76 children in that school, we have at least 12 or so other persons so we’re close to 90 individuals as primary contacts from that one child and our secondary contacts would be upwards of 200 in that particular instance based on the households.”
He added, “One other person from that cluster which is five persons would have been out and about as well with symptom otology in the last few days so we have additional primary and secondary contacts from those persons and they as well will be placed into 14 day quarantine.”
