IF the coronavirus was transmitted during the Carnival season, Trinidad and Tobago would now have tens of thousands of cases.
This was the comment of Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Roshan Parasram in an answer to a question during the virtual media conference to update the country on Covid-19 on Friday.
He said, “If we had transmission of this virus during the Carnival season we would have had tens of thousands of cases of coronavirus in Trinidad and Tobago to date.”
Parasram said TT began testing before any cases were imported into the country.
He said TT closed travel from China on January 30 and subsequently banned non-TT nationals from entering from nine countries.
Parasram said he did not feel that there was risk of Covid-19 being spread during the Carnival period.
He said there were groups who were in contact with people from the US, Canada and the UK and asked to be tested and the results returned negative.
Parasram said during this period these three countries had about 50 confirmed cases with the US having about ten in its population of 300 million.
He said before TT recorded its Covid-19 first case on March 12, there were none in the country.
Parasram also noted that there was a reduction in flu-like illnesses such as the common cold and H1N1 due to the public health measures to fight the Covid-19.
Other stories from virtual news conference on April 3:
