Gail Alexan­der

Health Min­istry Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram has or­dered a full probe in­to tele­vi­sion show host Ian Al­leyne’s al­leged de­ten­tion af­ter al­leged­ly re­ceiv­ing dis­charge pa­pers at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.

He made the com­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al COVID-19 up­date press brief­ing, say­ing he was await­ing re­ports from sev­er­al agen­cies.

How­ev­er, while it was clear whom they were re­fer­ring to, nei­ther Paras­ram nor Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh called any names re­gard­ing the mat­ter of “the pa­tient.”

Queries arose af­ter Al­leyne’s at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the CMO on Tues­day de­mand­ing Al­leyne’s dis­charge. This af­ter Al­leyne was re­port­ed­ly dis­charged from Cau­ra af­ter be­ing hos­pi­talised with the COVID virus but he was then told there was an er­ror with his re­sults and he could no longer leave.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing - af­ter Paras­ram and Deyals­ingh spoke - Ramdeen said the mat­ter was to be heard in court at 2 pm by Jus­tice Rahim. How­ev­er, that mat­ter was sub­se­quent­ly ad­journed to to­day.

At yes­ter­day’s brief­ing, Paras­ram said of­fi­cials at Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal were to give him a re­port on the is­sue by the end of yes­ter­day or to­day. He said he’d sought a de­tailed re­port stat­ing what had hap­pened. Oth­er in­for­ma­tion was com­ing from T&T Pub­lic Health Labs (TTPHL) and the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), which does the virus tests and de­liv­ers them to TTPHL.

Paras­ram said he hoped to get all the in­for­ma­tion with­in a few days and would then be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to give a state­ment.

Asked about gen­er­al COVID quar­an­ti­ning, Paras­ram said if one is test­ed pos­i­tive, un­der the Quar­an­tine act - which cov­ers COVID -, they should be placed in one of the two fa­cil­i­ties for such pa­tients (Cou­va or Cau­ra hos­pi­tals) to halt spread to their fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, up­set over the is­sue, said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s re­sponse to the pre-ac­tion let­ter not­ed that Paras­ram hadn’t yet re­ceived the let­ter, but it came to his at­ten­tion via the me­dia. Deyals­ingh slammed the al­leged “pub­lic po­lit­i­cal spec­ta­cle”, which he said dis­tract­ed from bat­tling the virus.

He called on all to re­sist the urge to “politi­cise this and fight le­gal bat­tles” since they were “be­com­ing part of the prob­lem.” Deyals­ingh said, “some peo­ple with po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tion, in­tent for their own short term po­lit­i­cal gain”, want­ed to cap­size the sit­u­a­tion, but this held po­ten­tial for “un­told dam­age” to the COVID re­sponse and they weren’t act­ing in T&T’s in­ter­est.

He read parts of the AG’s re­sponse to the pre-ac­tion let­ter.

On peo­ple chal­leng­ing the Quar­an­tine act and oth­er reg­u­la­tions, claim­ing their rights were be­ing in­fringed, Deyals­ingh said he’d leave that for the AG to ad­dress.

He claimed fight­ing the is­sue in the pub­lic do­main would lead to”let­ting the virus win” and pub­lish­ing the pre-ac­tion let­ter was to be strong­ly “frowned on”.

“This is a time to put away po­lit­i­cal weapons of de­struc­tion, let’s save our en­er­gy for the fight against the virus, not court­room - if we go there the virus will laugh at us,” Deyals­ingh said.