Soyi­ni Grey

“Hap­py, hope­ful, ex­cit­ed, ready to get this done with,” was how one of the 305 Roy­al Caribbean cruise work­ers de­scribed the mood on-board the En­chant­ment of the Seas now docked along­side the Cruise Ship Com­plex. The ves­sel is ex­pect­ed to re­main there for the next two weeks at least, as the work­ers will be quar­an­tined on board.

On Wednes­day at the Min­istry of Health press con­fer­ence, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young said they are ex­pect­ing close to 900 na­tion­als back home in the next 14 days.

The re­turn­ing na­tion­al on-board the En­chant­ment of the Seas ad­mit­ted to “a bit of anx­i­ety about the swab test” but said oth­er than that the mood on-board is light, since “peo­ple are just ready to be home.”

Guardian Me­dia saw peo­ple danc­ing on the bal­conies out­side of their cab­ins, and at least two peo­ple were seen wav­ing T&T flags as the ship pulled clos­er to shore. One man said he had been up since 3 am just to look out his win­dow to see Trinidad in his view.

Ad­di­tion­al cruise ship pas­sen­gers will be re­turn­ing to Trinidad, on Mon­day. Ini­tial fig­ures were that 19 crew from Nor­we­gian Cruise Lines, plus an ad­di­tion­al na­tion­al are due to ar­rive. On Tues­day sev­en crew mem­bers from Dis­ney Cruis­es will ar­rive.

T&T stu­dents study­ing at Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies cam­pus­es in Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos will be com­ing home this week­end. The air­line says it re­ceived a list of all el­i­gi­ble stu­dents from UWI and has made con­tact with them to make arrange­ments for their re­turn. On Sat­ur­day stu­dents from the Mona cam­pus will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed on a Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flight from Nor­man Man­ley In­ter­na­tion­al in Ja­maica. Stu­dents at the Cave Hill cam­pus will be placed on a CAL flight on Mon­day.

CAL is al­so op­er­at­ing repa­tri­a­tion flights for el­i­gi­ble Ja­maican and Bar­ba­di­an na­tion­als who were grant­ed the nec­es­sary per­mis­sions to re­turn home. It said per­sons from those coun­tries de­sirous of be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed on-board are asked to call CAL at 625-7200 ext 5, be­tween the 7 am and 7 pm if they have not done so al­ready.

Repa­tri­a­tion flights for Bar­ba­di­an na­tion­als are be­ing op­er­at­ed to­day and Mon­day. The flight for Ja­maican na­tion­als is BW3414 and it has an es­ti­mat­ed de­par­ture time of 7 am to­day. The air­line will al­so op­er­ate flights for Ja­maican na­tion­als who wish to de­part from An­tigua, and Nas­sau, the Ba­hamas, to­mor­row.

Pas­sen­gers are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive at their re­spec­tive air­ports four hours be­fore sched­uled de­par­ture to al­low suf­fi­cient time for check-in and se­cu­ri­ty process­es. Pas­sen­gers will be re­quired to wear face masks through­out their en­tire jour­ney from check-in to on-board the air­craft. There will be no meal ser­vice of­fered on any of these flights, and there­fore pas­sen­gers are en­cour­aged to walk with light snacks and per­son­al hy­giene items such as wipes and hand sani­tis­ers.

Min­is­ter Young said Gov­ern­ment plans to “get every­body home.” But he al­so says the speed at which they can do that is lim­it­ed by lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty with­in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.