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Monday, February 17, 2025

T&T records its first Omicron case: Here’s what we know so far

by

BRENT PINHEIRO
1161 days ago
20211214
FILE: Passengers enter the Piarco International Airport for health screenings by Port Health officials. (Photo by BRENT PINHEIRO)

FILE: Passengers enter the Piarco International Airport for health screenings by Port Health officials. (Photo by BRENT PINHEIRO)

BRENT PIN­HEIRO

 

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced yes­ter­day, T&T had record­ed its first im­port­ed case of the Omi­cron COVID-19 vari­ant of con­cern. Since then, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have blamed the air­line and the pas­sen­ger for breach­ing pro­to­cols, say­ing that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were not at fault. The trav­eller’s iden­ti­ty has not been re­vealed, but here's what we know about the sit­u­a­tion so far...

 

Where did it come from?

De­tails re­main lim­it­ed at the mo­ment. Ac­cord­ing to the Health Min­is­ter, a fe­male pas­sen­ger pre­sent­ed a pos­i­tive PCR test while check­ing in at the JFK In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and board­ed a flight to Pana­ma. Pana­ma does not re­quire ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed trav­ellers seek­ing to en­ter the coun­try to pro­vide a neg­a­tive COVID test; how­ev­er, they must fill out an Elec­tron­ic Health Af­fi­davit be­fore board­ing.

For pas­sen­gers in tran­sit, the Co­pa Air­lines web­site states: “If you are in tran­sit through Pana­ma and will be stay­ing with­in the in­ter­na­tion­al area, you must have the re­quired COVID-19 test for your fi­nal des­ti­na­tion, per­formed at your point of ori­gin.”

Lo­cal health of­fi­cials say in Pana­ma she pre­sent­ed a neg­a­tive anti­gen test to Co­pa Air­lines and was ac­cept­ed for trav­el to Trinidad, de­spite T&T on­ly recog­nis­ing RT-PCR tests as valid. It re­mains un­clear when and where that anti­gen test was done.

CM314’s flight path from Panama to Trinidad.  (Image courtesy Flightradar24.com)

CM314’s flight path from Panama to Trinidad. (Image courtesy Flightradar24.com)

Co­pa Air­lines flight 314 land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on De­cem­ber 9th at 12:53 am, car­ry­ing the COVID-19 pos­i­tive woman and dozens of pas­sen­gers. There she pre­sent­ed her­self for health screen­ing by Port Health of­fi­cials. Health screen­ings in­clude check­ing a trav­eller’s tem­per­a­ture, ob­ser­va­tion for signs of COVID-19, val­i­da­tion of a neg­a­tive PCR test and vac­ci­na­tion card or cer­tifi­cate (where ap­plic­a­ble), as well as an in­ter­view by a health of­fi­cer.

Ac­cord­ing to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, dur­ing this screen­ing process, of­fi­cials no­ticed her pos­i­tive PCR test and im­me­di­ate­ly placed her in­to iso­la­tion. The Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health was al­so no­ti­fied. A sam­ple was tak­en and sent to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies for ge­net­ic se­quenc­ing. The team de­tect­ed the vari­ant of con­cern some­time be­tween Thurs­day and Mon­day.

 

Where is the pa­tient now?

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh says the pa­tient is be­ing housed in a step-down fa­cil­i­ty. She will stay there un­til cleared by the au­thor­i­ties.

 

What about the peo­ple on­board the flight?

14 peo­ple have been placed in home quar­an­tine. These are all the peo­ple who were seat­ed two rows in front two rows be­hind and two rows on ei­ther side of the pas­sen­ger, as per WHO pro­to­col. All have pre­sent­ed neg­a­tive PCR tests thus far and, all 14 are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. No in­for­ma­tion has been re­leased about the pas­sen­gers on the flight from JFK to Pana­ma. 

Co­pa Air­lines re­quires masks on board all flights, which can be re­moved for eat­ing or drink­ing. There are no so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures on­board i.e., mid­dle seats aren’t blocked, al­though lim­it­ed move­ment is al­lowed through the cab­in.

 

Will there be con­se­quences?

Both the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and the Health Min­istry are cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, af­ter that, they will have to say which par­ties are li­able and what the fines will be. If it is de­ter­mined that the pa­tient up­loaded a false doc­u­ment to the TT Trav­el Pass web­site, she could be fac­ing a fine of $350,000 and six months in jail. It is not yet known if Co­pa Air­lines is cul­pa­ble in any way.

 

Why didn’t the TTrav­el Pass sys­tem flag the trav­eller?

The web­site re­quires the user to self-cer­ti­fy their de­tails; there is a penal­ty for pur­pose­ly up­load­ing in­cor­rect da­ta. In­com­ing trav­ellers must up­load sev­er­al doc­u­ments and pro­vide per­son­al in­for­ma­tion such as name, pass­port num­ber and ad­dress. In the health de­tails sec­tion, you must an­swer a se­ries of manda­to­ry ques­tions and up­load a neg­a­tive PCR test (see im­age be­low).

The TTravel Pass Health Questionnaire.

The TTravel Pass Health Questionnaire.

In an at­tempt to test the sys­tem as a demon­stra­tion for this ar­ti­cle, I tried to avoid up­load­ing any test re­sults, but the sys­tem would dis­play an er­ror mes­sage. There is no way to get to the next step with­out up­load­ing a file of some sort but the sys­tem doesn’t seem to be able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween a neg­a­tive or pos­i­tive test re­sult. The sys­tem does warn you that there is a penal­ty for up­load­ing false doc­u­ments.

Warning popup on the TTravel Pass website.

Warning popup on the TTravel Pass website.

Hav­ing gone through this process last month, I know first-hand that once you up­load doc­u­ments, the sys­tem al­lows you to move on to the next step. Once you com­plete all the steps, it au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as­signs you a QR code that you must present up­on re­quest. The on­ly time a man­u­al check comes in­to play is ei­ther at the air­port check-in counter or at the Port Health check at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al.

 

Is there a risk to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion?

No. The min­istry says this is an im­port­ed case and there is no risk to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. How­ev­er, it is a re­minder to get vac­ci­nat­ed and keep fol­low­ing the health pro­to­cols.

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