Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young says that the Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly field­ing "thou­sands" of re­quests from peo­ple want­i­ng bor­der ex­emp­tions.

Speak­ing at the Prime Min­is­ter's press con­fer­ence Sat­ur­day, Young said that while he un­der­stood fam­i­lies were ea­ger to come home, the Gov­ern­ment had to be care­ful who they let in­to the coun­try.

"I un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ty, we as a Gov­ern­ment un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ty that each fam­i­ly is fac­ing as they try to get the fam­i­ly mem­ber who is out­side, back in," he said.

He said the man­age­ment of who is let in­to the coun­try is "quite sim­ple."

"It comes down to num­bers and our pub­lic health sys­tem and what our pub­lic health sys­tem can con­trol. There are two sides of it. The state quar­an­tine is the pol­i­cy that we have de­cid­ed on based on the ad­vice of our pub­lic health of­fi­cials," he said.

Every­one com­ing back in­to the coun­try will be put in­to state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties. De­spite that reg­u­la­tion, Young said there was a "lit­tle bit of lee­way."

"That you may be un­der state su­per­vi­sion out­side of a state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty but that is on­ly a lim­it­ed num­ber," he said.

Young said that the rules are gov­erned by two con­cepts.

"God for­bid that we have a spike and there is a take-off of pos­i­tive cas­es, we have to be sure that the COVID health care sys­tem can man­age it," he said.

"Even on the state quar­an­tine, there are a lim­it­ed num­ber of spaces."

Young said that with­in the next week, the Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ed to deal with 600 to one thou­sand peo­ple re­turn­ing home.

He said the State had a "suc­cess sto­ry" when a lo­cal em­ploy­ee had some five work­ers in Nevis that need­ed to re­turn home and arranged to have the plane stop in St Lu­cia to pick up a vi­su­al­ly im­paired Trinida­di­an and bring him home with the group. They are all ex­pect­ed to re­turn on Wednes­day.

"His five work­ers will be put up in a fa­cil­i­ty where they will pay for it and the State su­per­vi­sion will take place," he said.

Young said the 98 rig work­ers, still out at sea, have been al­lowed to come back and they will quar­an­tine on the rig.

An­oth­er batch of Trinida­di­ans, work­ing on the Roy­al Caribbean cruise ship would be al­lowed to come home by Fri­day. There are over 360 peo­ple in that batch.

"The Min­istry of Health is pro­vid­ing doc­tors to test every­one who ar­rives on Fri­day and then they would be quar­an­tined on the ship," he said.

He said re­turn­ing stu­dents would be quar­an­tined at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus and it would be­come as State quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty.