For 68 Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als, they start­ed off this month on a dream cruise in the Caribbean Sea but on Wednesday end­ed up in a 14-day quar­an­tine in Ba­lan­dra af­ter the cruise was ru­ined by a sus­pect­ed out­break of the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) on board.

Al­though their stay at the Ba­lan­dra beach fa­cil­i­ty will in­clude meals and oth­er ameni­ties, it’s not the all-in­clu­sive they had in mind.

The na­tion­als re­turned home on a char­tered flight from Guade­loupe around noon yes­ter­day and were im­me­di­ate­ly screened and test­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. They were then tak­en to the tem­po­rary iso­la­tion camp in Ba­lan­dra in a con­voy led by mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said of the pas­sen­gers sent to the camp, none showed any symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with COVID-19.

“We re­ceived 68 per­sons from that cruise ship. We have been able to ab­sorb 68 peo­ple in­to a quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty, with no dis­tur­bance to our nor­mal health­care fa­cil­i­ties,” Deyals­ingh said.

The pas­sen­gers will be quar­an­tined un­der close mon­i­tor­ing by med­ical of­fi­cials for the 14-day pe­ri­od and med­ical of­fi­cials will be ro­tat­ed fre­quent­ly to lim­it their ex­po­sure to pos­si­ble con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, he said.

The na­tion­als were on board the Cos­ta Favolosa that was forced to an­chor off of Guade­loupe for sev­er­al days af­ter be­ing de­nied en­try to Mar­tinique be­cause of­fi­cials there feared for the safe­ty of their cit­i­zens.

The ship, which can ac­com­mo­date 2,968 pas­sen­gers, be­longs to Car­ni­val Cruise Line and sails to the Caribbean Sea, Baltic Sea and the Mediter­ranean re­gion.

In the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day morn­ing, two fe­male na­tion­als who were al­so on the cruise re­turned home hav­ing test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. The women were met at the Pi­ar­co Air­port and tak­en to quar­an­tine at ei­ther the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal or the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, which are the des­ig­nat­ed hold­ing fa­cil­i­ties for pa­tients who test pos­i­tive for the virus.

Deyals­ingh said rel­a­tives and friends of those quar­an­tined in Ba­lan­dra can de­liv­er items to the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s San­gre Grande Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Of­fice on the East­ern Main Road so that they can be car­ried to the Ba­lan­dra site.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has so far con­firmed sev­en cas­es of COVID-19. All the cas­es thus far were con­tract­ed over­seas.