The Health Ministry recorded over 2,040 recovered community cases on Friday. This reduced the number of active cases from 20,322 to 18,800.

In what will hopefully remain a trend of five deaths or less, three covid19 deaths were recorded on Friday. This brought the death toll to 3,676.

The number of new cases reported from samples taken between Tuesday and Thursday was 543.

The Health Ministry’s covid19 update said the people who died were three elderly men. It said two of the people had multiple comorbidities, including a mix of hypertension, congestive cardiac failure, a history of strokes, posterior leukoencephalopathy (a disorder of the brain and spinal cord), aortic aneurysm, and pancreatic cancer. One person had one comorbidity.

Since March 2020, there have been 132,383 cases of covid19, of which 109,907 have recovered.

There are 192 patients in hospital. Of these, there are 52 people at the Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility, with four in the intensive care unit and five in the high dependency unit. There are 22 people at the Caura Hospital, 36 at the Augustus Long Hospital, six at the St Ann’s Hospital, 36 at the Arima General Hospital, 30 at the St James Medical Complex, eight at the Scarborough Regional Hospital, Fort King George and two at the Scarborough Regional Hospital, Signal Hill. The new Point Fortin Hospital has been decommissioned as a covid19 facility.

There are 28 patients in step-down facilities, with none at the Claxton Bay Correctional Facility, none at UWI Debe, five at UTT Valsayn, 23 at the Point Fortin Area Hospital, none at the Port of Spain field hospital, none at the Couva Field Hospital, none at the Tacarigua Facility, and none in Tobago.

There are 45 people in state quarantine facilities, and 18,535 people in home self-isolation. There are 2,040 recovered community cases and 22 people have been discharged from public health facilities.

The ministry said that 82.7 per cent or 13,838 of 16,744 patients in the parallel healthcare system were unvaccinated, based on data from July 22 to March 9.

It said of the 3,632 deaths up to March 9, 250 were vaccinated, 3,029 were unvaccinated, and 390 had died before the first cohort of vaccinated people became fully vaccinated on May 24, 2021.

There are 705,430 people who have been fully vaccinated out of a total of 1.4 million people, while 694,570 people have received either a first dose or no dose of a vaccine. The update said 50.4 per cent of the total population had been vaccinated.

The update said the total number of people vaccinated with their first dose of a two-dose regime was 687,698.

The number of people vaccinated with their second dose was 649,721, while the number of people vaccinated with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 55,709.

A total of 139,980 people have received an additional primary dose or a booster dose.

The number of people tested in both public and private facilities is 648,591, of which 293,318 were done at private facilities and 355,273 were done at public facilities.