Gov­ern­ment is re­ject­ing Roy­al Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al’s (RCI) re­quest for T&T na­tion­als aboard its Vi­sion of the Seas cruise ship to be­gin quar­an­tine while sail­ing to Trinidad.

The ship cur­rent­ly hous­es ap­prox­i­mate­ly 345 RCI em­ploy­ees who are seek­ing repa­tri­a­tion in­to T&T af­ter COVID-19 crashed the cruise in­dus­try back in March.

Over the week­end, RCI said it was still work­ing with the gov­ern­ment to repa­tri­ate em­ploy­ees, adding that they will be re­quired to com­plete a 14-day quar­an­tine. The com­pa­ny said it re­ceived ap­proval for the em­ploy­ees to com­plete the quar­an­tine on board and re­quest­ed ap­proval for the pe­ri­od to be­gin while sail­ing, in hopes of ex­pe­dit­ing the em­ploy­ees’ re­turn home.

At Mon­day’s COVID-19 up­date, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram re­called that last Wednes­day, the Vi­sion of the Seas dropped off 356 em­ploy­ees in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines of which eight were found to be COVID-19 pos­i­tive. He said when the ship ar­rives in T&T, the em­ploy­ees will un­der­go sim­i­lar test­ing.

“The quar­an­tine process can­not be­gin be­fore you come in­to Trinidad & To­ba­go wa­ters. More­so, be­cause that is the same ves­sel that had eight pos­i­tives out of 356 peo­ple from the Vin­cent­ian co­hort of that ship. When the ship comes in­to Trinidad wa­ters, we have to do a sim­i­lar as­sess­ment that was done in terms of St Vin­cent, mean­ing tak­ing sam­ples from every­one on board and de­ter­min­ing whether they are pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive.

“Based on that find­ing, then we will de­ter­mine what is the best way for­ward. Of course, if we get a large group of pos­i­tive peo­ple, the ship it­self would be­come al­most as an in­fect­ed ves­sel, so we have to look at al­ter­nate means of quar­an­ti­ning. It re­al­ly de­pends on what we find when we do the sam­pling when they come in­to Trinidad wa­ters, but it can­not be pri­or to com­ing in­to Trinidad wa­ters,” Paras­ram said.

The ship is cur­rent­ly docked in Bar­ba­dos, await­ing per­mis­sion to en­ter lo­cal wa­ters. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is still in dis­cus­sion with RCI and are await­ing the de­tails on the num­ber of na­tion­als that are work­ing on RCI cruise ships and the ves­sels they are on.

“There is a con­cern that a num­ber of ves­sels have had crew mem­bers who have very re­cent­ly, with­in the past few days, test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 and our na­tion­als are on these ves­sels. The quar­an­tine is­sue is for de­ter­mi­na­tion by the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer when we are pro­vid­ed with the de­tails we are seek­ing.

“There are is­sues that need to be worked out as we be­lieve that there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 360 crew mem­bers who are Trinidad & To­ba­go na­tion­als work­ing with Roy­al Caribbean,” Young said.

He said those arrange­ments should be com­plet­ed with­in the next few days. Mean­while, Ocea­nia Cruis­es has resched­uled the date of the MS Ma­ri­na’s ar­rival in T&T from June 11 to June 18. There are 14 T&T na­tion­als aboard the cruise ship. The ship was ex­pect­ed to leave Be­lize to­day for oth­er Cen­tral and South Amer­i­can coun­ties as it con­tin­ues its repa­tri­a­tion of em­ploy­ees.