RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Over 200 in­mates at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca will un­der­go swab­bing for test­ing for Covid-19 on Wednes­day and Thurs­day, this week.

This has been con­firmed by the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Den­nis Pul­chan, in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

Com­mis­sion­er Pul­chan ex­plained that these in­mates are the ones who were iden­ti­fied as pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary con­tacts through trac­ing of those who would have come in con­tact with the 18 in­mates that test­ed pos­i­tive for the Covid-19 over the week­end.

“We are putting in­fra­struc­ture in place al­ready. I have spo­ken to doc­tors from Mount Hope and we are putting things in place for when they come to start the process. The in­mates who will be swabbed are still in the cor­doned off area in a sep­a­rate di­vi­sion. We are still in lock­down mode,” Pul­chan said.

Asked if there are any con­tin­gency plans should there be full-scale con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in the prison, Pul­chan replied:

“We are hop­ing for the best. If it re­sults in a full scale con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, we will then have to prob­a­bly call out all of­fi­cers who are on va­ca­tion or oth­er­wise. Al­though we have seen that of­fi­cers are con­tract­ing the virus, we al­so are see­ing re­cov­er­ies so there is a high turnover. Hop­ing we don’t have to reach to that.”

Pul­chan said he vis­it­ed the in­mates housed at the Clax­ton Bay fa­cil­i­ty on Tues­day morn­ing and con­firmed that they have been seen by doc­tors.

“They have to wait out the 14-day quar­an­tine pe­ri­od and then they will be re-swabbed and re-test­ed. Once they are neg­a­tive they will then be moved out of that fa­cil­i­ty and back in­to the prison.”

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

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice has since ad­vised that the MSP is un­der tem­po­rary lock­down and 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.

“They were im­me­di­ate­ly re­lo­cat­ed to the Clax­ton Bay Cor­rec­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ty, our of­fi­cial covid-19 treat­ment cen­tre, and con­tact trac­ing was ini­ti­at­ed,” Com­mis­sion­er Pul­chan said.

Pul­chan not­ed the con­cerns of rel­a­tives and friends and is as­sur­ing all that the af­fect­ed per­sons are be­ing ob­served and mon­i­tored dai­ly. Al­so, Wel­fare Of­fi­cers have been as­signed to up­date per­sons iden­ti­fied as next of kin.

“Con­tain­ment mea­sures have con­tin­ued with a sched­uled test­ing of in­mates iden­ti­fied as con­tacts to the pos­i­tive cas­es,” he said. “Al­so, 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 said as of Mon­day, the Prison Ser­vice had record­ed a to­tal of 57 pos­i­tive cas­es through­out the na­tion's pris­ons, with 15 mak­ing full re­cov­er­ies thus far.