Minister: State quarantine mandatory for returnees

State quarantine will be mandatory for anyone re-entering the country, regardless of whether they have gone through quarantine in the country they are coming from.

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said this is in accordance with quarantine protocols set out by the CMO. He said it is policy that the health ministry must have assurance that returnees have been properly quarantined in TT, as the ministry has no idea of the circumstances of their quarantine in any other country. He said the ministry is not prepared to take their word that they were properly quarantined, and this policy is to protect the returnees, their families and the population.

Currently there are 14 people in quarantine at the Cascadia Hotel, of whom 12 are nurses from Cuba, and two returnees from the Bahamas and the US who entered the country on Monday.

He said there are now 10,000 test kits in TT, exclusively for use here, and testing can now be ramped up in a serious way. So far 792 tests have been done in the community and all have been negative.

Deyalsingh announced that the Scarborough General Hospital has received machines and kits to enable testing for covid19 in Tobago. Training and validation are taking place there and testing can begin from next week.

He said the machine, called a gene expert machine, is not a high throughput machine like the ones at the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and the Trinidad Public Health Laboratory. It can only do three tests per hour, and so is suitable for emergency use in Tobago if there is concern about a patient. A result can be had in 45 minutes.

Tests will no longer have to be flown to Trinidad once the machine has been certified, he said, and this will lead to a more robust response in Tobago.

The minister also announced that elective surgeries have restarted and patients who were awaiting surgery will be contacted. He said as minister he made the decision to stop elective surgeries, with the support of the CMO and the medical chiefs of staff at the various regioanl health authorities. He reiterated that this was not the decision of any individual CEO.

Responding to a letter to the editor in a daily newspaper, Deyalsingh denied claims by a “well-known antagonist” that the CEO of the Southwest Regional Health Authority had stopped elective surgeries. He said it was unfortunate that the individual continued to peddle their version of untruth.

Deyalsingh said the CMO had said weeks ago that once the appropriate PPE had been sourced and the first hump of covid19 had been passed, elective surgery could restart, and this could now be done.

The minister reiterated that random testing will continue once a patient falls within the expanded parameters of the clinical definition.

HThe ministry has been achieving its goal of 50 tests a day outside of the regular testing at CARPHA, he said.