SASCHA WIL­SON

Two more na­tion­als on board the En­chant­ment of the Seas have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, bring­ing the num­ber of cas­es from the cruise ship to nine, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh say­ing dur­ing Sat­urday’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence.

This comes even as the oth­er na­tion­als on board the ves­sel ex­pressed con­cern about when their quar­an­tine will end.

Six of the 300-plus na­tion­als aboard had test­ed pos­i­tive on their ar­rival on June 14, while an­oth­er of them test­ed pos­i­tive on Fri­day. Yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh said 15 min­utes be­fore the press con­fer­ence he was told two oth­er na­tion­als had test­ed pos­i­tive and they were to be sent to the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal with the oth­er sev­en cruise work­ers.

He al­so re­vealed the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty had ac­cept­ed 20 de­por­tees, 18 males and two fe­males, from the Unit­ed States last week and they were in quar­an­tine. He said the two fe­male de­por­tees were at UWI’s Debe Cam­pus, putting the to­tal peo­ple there at 45. He said they had op­er­a­tionalised the Vi­sion on Mis­sion fa­cil­i­ty in Clax­ton Bay for the male de­por­tees. He al­so said the 100 Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies stu­dents at Cana­da Hall had test­ed neg­a­tive and were ex­pect­ed to be re­leased yes­ter­day.

Re­gard­ing the rest of the na­tion­als on the En­chant­ment on the Seas, Deyals­ingh said Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Roshan Paras­ram was look­ing at whether they would have to restart their quar­an­tine in light of the three ad­di­tion­al cas­es.

The na­tion­als came in on June 14 and their quar­an­tine pe­ri­od was ini­tial­ly sched­uled to end this week­end.

Deyals­ingh said it was dif­fi­cult for him to say when or where the na­tion­als had con­tract­ed the virus but said he was hap­py the min­istry used sci­en­tif­ic in­for­ma­tion to guide them and did not give in to the pres­sure by the na­tion­als, who at one point had asked to have free ac­cess to move around the ves­sel.

“I think if we had giv­en in to that pub­lic pres­sure and the pres­sure com­ing from them to have free ac­cess to walk about, mix and min­gle, what we will be faced with this morn­ing is not two ad­di­tion­al cas­es, it could have been 20, 25 or 200,” he said.

“If we had al­lowed them free reign to the ves­sel and the num­ber of in­fec­tions went up sig­nif­i­cant­ly, they would not be al­lowed to leave the cruise ship as ear­ly as they could leave now.”

As of last evening, the num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es stood at 126 with eight deaths.