Young: No favours for those who 'run to media'

The government is preparing to receive 147 nationals from Grenada, Florida, and Canada into state quarantine facilities.

With the arrival of these groups, Minister of National Security Stuart Young, during a virtual media press conference, said the National Racquet Centre in Tacarigua, Home of Football in Couva and the Penal/Debe UWI campus facilities would be full by Friday.

The ministry has granted 4,515 exemptions so far and some nationals have agreed to pay for their 14-day quarantine. They will be returned to TT in phases.

Young ascribed the country's success in containing the virus to the closure of the borders.

"All of our recent positive covid19 cases have been imported cases," he said.

To keep the momentum of that success going, the minister said TT now has to focus on carefully managing the number of citizens returning and when they will arrive, to prevent community spread.

While some nationals are eager to return, Young said the government would not be pressured into granting exemptions if they "run to the media."

"There are others who are now finding themselves in more straining circumstances. How do you balance that list? How do you balance (a) person (who) went off for two weeks ended up having a baby, they're have postpartum issues now and (are)  suffering from depression with someone who now runs to the media to claim 'I need to come home immediately?'"

On Wednesday afternoon, 76 nationals returned from Grenada. Young said the group included 25 university students and ten faculty staff members.

On Friday, Caribbean Airlines will bring a repatriation flight from Canada to return 71 nationals. People who had applied and have been waiting to return for an extended period will be allowed to return on that flight.

Nineteen of them will use the state quarantine facility at the Home of Football ,Couva. The rest have agreed to pay for state-supervised quarantine at a private facility.

Young also said 80 exemptions were granted to groups in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. That batch will return within a week and a half.

The government is also preparing to return 770 more nationals, who will include students in India. Some will be flown in by air ambulance.

Young said 35 foreign workers would also be granted exemptions to assist with "emergency repair works" for major energy and manufacturing platforms.

"Some of our manufacturing platforms and local manufacturers are asking for foreign workers to come in to upkeep the equipment."

No commercial flights are being allowed into TT.

Currently, there are 64 people quarantined at the UWI St Augustine Penal/Debe campus, 25 at the Chancellor Hotel, 19 at Cascadia Hotel and 12 at the National Academy for the Performing Arts.

One patient remains hospitalised at the Couva hospital, waiting to be discharged after two negative tests are recorded.

Young said the Regent Star Hotel has been added to the list of state quarantine facilities and the government is looking at others to add to the list.

"What we're doing is working with the Ministry of Health and National Security to see if we can identify some other hotels outside of the way, that (are) not around populations and residents, that we can increase our state-supervised quarantine facilities."

He noted that citizens formerly stranded in Mexico, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and Barbados, which included cruise ship workers, UWI students, rig workers, oil and gas workers, were some of the people who have returned and been quarantined and released within the last two months.

Asked about surveys and a retrospective study on recovered covid19 patients promised a few months ago by government, CMO Dr Roshan Parasram said because of the large number of people returning, the focus is now on using the parallel health sector's resources to manage, monitor and treat these people.

"We don't want to take away from the medical aspect of managing the repatriated persons for the sake of writing a report.

"The reports are being done, but at a slower pace, because right now, we have changed from managing covid-positive patients, the initial 115, to now manage and these hundreds and thousands of returnees."