Deyalsingh: No travel restrictions on US, UK

Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh. - ANGELO MARCELLE
Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh. - ANGELO MARCELLE

Travel restrictions will not be imposed on the US and Britain, said Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh on Thursday.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump announced travel restrictions on 26 European countries as a move to stop the spread of the covid19.

Speaking to the media after visiting the St Ann’s RC Primary School, Deyalsingh said in instituting travel restrictions from day one, the Government has to take all reasonable measures.

During a post-cabinet press briefing on Thursday, Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram said the criteria used to decide on travel restrictions for a country depended on the level of transmission of the virus. If a country has large amounts of community transmissions, it will be considered for restrictions. If a country only has imported cases, it will likely not be considered.

Deyalsingh said if the Government takes the route of isolating TT from all countries in the world, it will create further problems.

“US, Britain, Canada, India, Jamaica, Guyana – those public health systems seem to have their issues under control.

“You would see now the US is being even more draconian than any country in the world by having states of emergencies in different counties (sic).”

Some governors of some US states have declared states of emergency.

Deyalsingh said the Government is monitoring every country, territory, cruise ship and airline “as closely as humanly possible.” TT has nine countries on its travel advisory list and he said as time goes on and conditions change, TT will add more countries if necessary.

“It is a tightrope we are walking. You have to keep the business of TT running while at the same time taking all necessary, reasonable steps. To date, when we took our first step on January 30, to now, we have no confirmed cases.

“What that has done is bought us a lot of time to put a parallel healthcare system in place, because if we didn’t be proactive from day one and put those travel restrictions, and covid19 hit us a month ago, we would not be in the state of readiness that we are now with Caura and Couva.”

At a Ministry of Health press conference later Thursday, Deyalsingh announced TT's first case of covid19 had travelled to the country from Switzerland on Monday. The Proman TT member of staff tested positive for the virus on Thursday afternoon.

At the school, Deyalsingh said if there was a need to treat confirmed cases in the regular hospitals it would mean a total shutdown or shutting off certain services.

“We don’t want that. You want the hundreds of thousands of people who use the health system on a daily basis who depend on it to have their necessary daily medical issues attended to.

“That was the purpose of travel restrictions in the first place. We have bought that time.”

Deyalsingh said now that the covid19 is literally on TT’s doorstep, this country is ready for the "inevitable" virus when it hits.

He said the Government must be reasonable in what steps it took to respond to the virus and could not totally isolate the country

“It means drugs can’t be flown into the country. It means spare parts for equipment cannot come in. Industry would have to shut down. It means the whole country would have to shut down, which we don’t want.

“We must not panic, but take all reasonable steps to delay us as far as humanly possible, get your house in order – which we have done – and get yourself in a state of readiness for what is the inevitable arrival of covid19 in TT.”

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"Deyalsingh: No travel restrictions on US, UK"

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