Gov­ern­ment is ex­plor­ing the idea of al­low­ing a lim­it­ed num­ber of over­seas work­ers re­turn­ing to T&T to pay for their own quar­an­tine costs un­der state su­per­vi­sion, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Re­ply­ing to an Op­po­si­tion query in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Young said there’s no fee for the state’s COVID-19 quar­an­tine ser­vices but the idea of al­low­ing a lim­it­ed num­ber of na­tion­als to re­turn and bear their own quar­an­tine costs was be­ing ex­plored.

He said free quar­an­tine ser­vices were done for 261 na­tion­als. But he said ap­pli­ca­tions from peo­ple want­i­ng to re­turn home are in the thou­sands and Gov­ern­ment was bal­anc­ing the avail­able quar­an­tine beds to en­sure the health sys­tem could cope and wasn’t over­run. He said the idea be­ing ex­plored could ap­ply to work­ers out­side of T&T whose em­ploy­ers would be will­ing to pay for their re­turn and ac­com­mo­da­tion costs.

But this would be lim­it­ed by sus­tain­able ac­com­mo­da­tion and the abil­i­ty to keep them un­der state quar­an­tine su­per­vi­sion along with those in state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties. He said the med­ical au­thor­i­ties’ abil­i­ty to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion will al­so be a de­ter­min­ing fac­tor.

Young said room will be avail­able de­pend­ing on how the sit­u­a­tion is han­dled in the state med­ical fa­cil­i­ties and if there’s a re­cur­rence of COVID-19 cas­es.

“We’ll dis­cuss this more in com­ing days,” Young said, adding there’s no fixed cost of quar­an­tine as this de­pends on lo­ca­tions.

Young not­ed that to avoid vi­ral con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in places used by COVID pa­tients, the ar­eas had to be sani­tised and re­main free of use for two weeks be­fore fur­ther use. ­—Gail Alexan­der