Tracking bracelets for quarantine patients may come soon

HEALTH Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said the ministry is looking closely at the Caribbean countries which use tracking bracelets to monitor patients who are in self-isolation with covid19.

But even if this is approved for Trinidad and Tobago, he said, it will be voluntary, as the constitution prevents their use from being mandatory.

He was responding to questions from the media during a virtual press conference on Wednesday morning.

Deyalsingh said Jamaica, Grenada and the Cayman Islands' health ministries began using these bracelets to prevent patients from breaking quarantine. They have also been introduced to Antigua and Barbuda.

Locally, there have been a few incidents of patients breaking quarantine, some of which led to the virus being spread to several others.

He said he recently spoke to Jamaica and Grenada’s health ministers for some insight.

“They have recently started it in a limited way. We are monitoring how it is going there, and the final decision is a decision we’ll have to make between the Ministry of Health, the Attorney General and the Minister of National Security.”

But he reminded the public, “That will have to be at the discretion of the person. It is not mandatory, because of our constitution and right to privacy. So we have a slightly different arrangement.”

He said in Jamaica, it’s solely being used on deportees.

“We’ll see how the results are and to see how applicable it is to TT on a voluntary basis.”

These bracelets use GPS tracking and will send an alert to the relevant authorities if the patient ventures beyond their set boundaries or tries to remove it.

Internationally, Bulgaria, Hong Kong and South Korea are among the countries that have also implemented these devices.

And with a new strain of the covid19 virus in South Africa and the UK, Deyalsingh said the government has to now “re-evaluate everything that we do now, because the evidence coming out is that this new variation is 50-70 per cent more transmissible.

“Think about what that means for a country that has community spread…So yes, we will be considering the impact on that new variant in all decisions we make from now going forward.”