The two lat­est nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) cas­es an­nounced by the Min­istry of Health on Tues­day night were two Trinida­di­an women who were aboard the Cos­ta Favolosa cruise ship that was an­chored off Guade­loupe for sev­er­al days af­ter not be­ing al­lowed to en­ter Mar­tinique.

The ship was de­nied en­try to Mar­tinique af­ter pas­sen­gers on board were sus­pect­ed of con­tract­ing the virus and French au­thor­i­ties there felt it was a crit­i­cal health safe­ty con­cern due to the glob­al spread of COVID-19.

Sources at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port told Guardian Me­dia that the women re­turned home aboard Caribbean Air­lines flight BW449 from Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos, around 8.25 pm on Tues­day.

Sources re­vealed that af­ter get­ting the all-clear from Guade­loupe au­thor­i­ties to leave the ship, the women were test­ed on their way back home in both in Guade­loupe and Bar­ba­dos, where they were in-tran­sit to T&T, and the tests done in one of those two coun­tries sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed their pos­i­tive sta­tus. How­ev­er, it is un­clear in which coun­try their tests turned up pos­i­tive.

A source who was present when the flight ar­rived at Pi­ar­co on Tues­day night and was fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion said: "Their pos­i­tive re­sults were sent to port health au­thor­i­ties here be­fore they ar­rived."

Sources said in prepa­ra­tion for the women’s ar­rival in T&T on Tues­day night, an am­bu­lance was called to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to pick them up for trans­porta­tion to ei­ther the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal or the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, where they will be quar­an­tined and treat­ed.

The am­bu­lance, which Guardian Me­dia saw ac­com­pa­nied by a van, drove in­to the air­port on the west­ern side through a pri­vate road, near the TT Post of­fice, short­ly af­ter mid­night. The am­bu­lance left the air­port's com­pound about half an hour lat­er with the van in tow.

The flight crew and oth­er pas­sen­gers who were aboard the plane were al­so ex­pect­ed to be screened at the air­port and asked to take mea­sures to self-quar­an­tine them­selves for a 14-day pe­ri­od.

Guardian Me­dia sent a What­sapp mes­sage to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh seek­ing fur­ther de­tails about the sit­u­a­tion close to 12.40 am Wednes­day. Un­der­stand­ably, the min­is­ter might have been al­ready in bed and the mes­sages were not read. An­oth­er Min­istry of Health of­fi­cial was al­so con­tact­ed by phone but they said they could not di­vulge any in­for­ma­tion about the two lat­est cas­es.

Around 11 pm on Tues­day night, how­ev­er, the Min­istry of Health an­nounced via a me­dia re­lease that two new COVID-19 cas­es had been de­tect­ed, bring­ing the num­ber of con­firmed cas­es in this coun­try to sev­en. They al­so in­di­cat­ed that "all pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es thus far have been im­port­ed."

The min­istry re­mind­ed the pub­lic that "per­son­al pro­tec­tive mea­sures are the most ef­fec­tive tools against COVID-19” and that “so­cial dis­tanc­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal at this time giv­en the man­ner in which the dis­ease is spread."

On Mon­day dur­ing a press con­fer­ence to ad­dress mea­sures tak­en to com­bat the spread of the virus, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had said then that some 70 el­der­ly na­tion­als were up the Caribbean on a cruise ship - which had some COVID cas­es - and they were try­ing to re­turn.

The Prime Min­is­ter said they could not be de­nied en­try as they were cit­i­zens.

"They're com­ing home and when they do, they form part of our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty," Row­ley had said then.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young in a me­dia re­lease on Tues­day said he and oth­er mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment were com­mu­ni­cat­ing with some of the na­tion­als aboard the cruise ship, as well as their fam­i­ly and friends

Young said Gov­ern­ment was in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the French au­thor­i­ties to get ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion on the sta­tus of our na­tion­als on the ship and how those au­thor­i­ties in­tend­ed to treat this sit­u­a­tion and the lat­est in­for­ma­tion they had was that arrange­ments were be­ing made to repa­tri­ate the T&T na­tion­als. The re­lease added that gov­ern­ment agen­cies, in par­tic­u­lar the Min­istry of Health and Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, were pre­pared to re­ceive the T&T na­tion­als.