Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who re­cent­ly re­turned home from abroad and have been told to self-quar­an­tine will now face strong ac­tion if they breach the or­der.

Young gave the warn­ing even as he and oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials re­fused to di­rect­ly con­firm whether tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Ian Al­leyne had in­deed con­tract­ed the virus dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Health Wednes­day.

Young, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Roshan Paras­ram all cit­ed pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty as they re­fused to con­firm Al­leyne’s claim, made on so­cial me­dia on Tues­day, that he had test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

“There is some­thing called a pa­tient char­ter of rights. Any pa­tient, re­gard­less of sta­tus, so­cio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus, pro­fes­sion, what­ev­er, they are en­ti­tled to pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty,” said Deyals­ingh in re­sponse the ques­tions about the Crime­watch host.

How­ev­er, he said all those who felt they had been in con­tact with some­one who has test­ed pos­i­tive or is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing COVID-19 should self-iso­late and con­tact the hot­line where they would be ad­vised fur­ther.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed by sev­er­al med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers that pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty stands even if the in­di­vid­ual has di­vulged their in­for­ma­tion. Doc­tors are on­ly al­lowed to re­veal such med­ical in­for­ma­tion with the pa­tient’s con­sent.

While not stat­ing a name, Young made a few ref­er­ences to the video post­ed to so­cial me­dia, where Al­leyne stat­ed he had test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, as he (Young) sought to dri­ve home the point that ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour could put scores of peo­ple at risk.

“Mov­ing around, as we have seen hap­pen by per­son­al­i­ties, that has led to se­ri­ous con­tact spread risk. It (COVID-19) does not re­spect, the virus does not re­spect your sta­tus, or what per­ceived sta­tus you may think you have,” Young said.

“To say that you don’t think that this could have hap­pened to you when you have test­ed pos­i­tive is of no use to all of the peo­ple that you have put your­self in­to con­tact with when you should have been self-quar­an­tined. We are go­ing to be tak­ing strong po­si­tions with re­spect to that.”

He added, “From a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty point of view, this is a se­ri­ous con­cern and we use this op­por­tu­ni­ty as an ex­am­ple to us all of how con­tact spread re­al­ly works be­cause it is re­al and now amongst you all, from the mes­sages that I have been get­ting. And how one per­son be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble can be in con­tact with all of us in this room and we don’t even know, and for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods, you are just do­ing your job, you are be­ing sent on as­sign­ment to do your job.

“All of that could be de­feat­ed by the ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of per­sons who have trav­elled and then say­ing ‘well I’m feel­ing well let me go out there.’ And that is why there is a manda­to­ry pe­ri­od of 14 days for high-risk peo­ple.”

Point­ing to the the fact that 44 of the na­tion­als who were quar­an­tined af­ter re­turn­ing from a Caribbean cruise had so far been con­firmed pos­i­tive, Young said, “But you don’t have that op­por­tu­ni­ty with every­body. So per­sons who have trav­elled and this is now a live ex­am­ple amongst you all, and with that lev­el of ex­po­sure.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact the Min­is­ter fol­low­ing the press con­fer­ence to ex­plain fur­ther what ac­tion could be tak­en against some­one who breaks self-quar­an­tine and puts oth­ers at risk, but did not re­ceive a re­sponse up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.

Paras­ram said a full list of in­di­vid­u­als who had en­tered this coun­try over the past two weeks has been sent to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the De­fence Force so that those peo­ple can be mon­i­tored.

“It does not a take a large num­ber of peo­ple do­ing the ir­re­spon­si­ble thing to spread this dis­ease to all of us. So what my com­mit­tee has been do­ing, the in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee, in par­tic­u­lar the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and De­fence Force, as well as the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, they have al­ready sent to me a list­ing of most of the per­sons who have come through the bor­ders over the last 14 days. We have ac­tu­al­ly put that in an ex­cel for­mat,” Paras­ram said.

“And if peo­ple are found er­rant un­der the Quar­an­tine Act, we will ac­tu­al­ly use the quar­an­tine act to do three things if need­ed.

“We will im­pose quar­an­tine in a fa­cil­i­ty if it is re­quired, whether it be a hos­pi­tal or it be an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment’s choice; we will im­prove stricter quar­an­tine if need be with po­lice around the clock around your your homes, or we can im­pose fines which are fines which we have said be­fore—six months’ im­pris­on­ment if re­quired or $6,000 as the need be.”