A video show­ing in­mates of the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) be­ing moved to a cor­doned-off area of the fa­cil­i­ty is now in the hands of the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Den­nis Pul­chan who has ex­pressed con­cern that it was “il­le­gal­ly trans­mit­ted.”

How­ev­er, he con­firmed the au­then­tic­i­ty of the video and said it showed in­mates who were iden­ti­fied as pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary con­tacts of those who had test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. He said at the time they were be­ing tak­en from their cells to a cor­doned-off area to be mon­i­tored to see if they dis­play signs of the virus.

Pul­chan said med­ical of­fi­cials are ex­pect­ed in the prison to do test­ing for COVID-19.

Over the week­end 18 pris­on­ers from the MSP test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus and re­lo­cat­ed to the Clax­ton Bay Cor­rec­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ty for quar­an­tine.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice ad­vis­es that the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison is un­der tem­po­rary lock­down af­ter 18 in­mates re­turned pos­i­tive re­sults for COVID-19.

"The pris­on­ers, who com­plained about feel­ing un­well were placed be­fore the pris­ons med­ical of­fi­cer who rec­om­mend­ed test­ing as per pro­ce­dure. They were test­ed on Thurs­day, No­vem­ber 5 and re­turned pos­i­tive re­sults the fol­low­ing day,” Pul­chan said.

“They were im­me­di­ate­ly re­lo­cat­ed to the Clax­ton Bay Cor­rec­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ty, our of­fi­cial COVID-19 treat­ment cen­tre, and con­tact trac­ing was ini­ti­at­ed."

He said the af­fect­ed in­mates are be­ing ob­served and mon­i­tored dai­ly and wel­fare of­fi­cers have been as­signed to up­date their next of kin.

“Con­tain­ment mea­sures have con­tin­ued with a sched­uled test­ing of in­mates iden­ti­fied as con­tacts to the pos­i­tive cas­es, dai­ly san­i­ti­za­tion ex­er­cis­es, ther­mal scan­ning of both staff and in­mates, manda­to­ry wear­ing of masks, uti­liza­tion of full per­son­al pro­tec­tion equip­ment in ar­eas iden­ti­fied as hot zones, lim­it­ed move­ment or trans­fer of pris­on­ers and en­force­ment of ad­vi­sories for mem­bers of staff to de­sist from at­tend­ing work and seek med­ical at­ten­tion at the near­est health fa­cil­i­ty if feel­ing un­well,” Pul­chan

To date, there have been 57 pos­i­tive cas­es in the na­tion's pris­ons, with 15 mak­ing full re­cov­er­ies so far.

“Tasked with the man­age­ment of over 4,000 in­mates, we con­tin­ue to work as­sid­u­ous­ly and un­der the guid­ance of the ex­pert med­ical per­son­nel of the Min­istry of Health,” Pul­chan said.

On the is­sue of the video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, Pul­chan said: “I do have my con­cerns and I do hope to find the per­son who would have il­le­gal­ly trans­mit­ted that par­tic­u­lar video.

“With re­gards to mo­biles if I get 100 to­day, I will get 100 to­mor­row . . . We are grap­pling with this be­cause it does have a neg­a­tive im­pact be­cause shots are be­ing called against of­fi­cers from in­mates via the mo­biles and I am do­ing the best I can in deal­ing with this is­sue."