Gail Alexan­der &

Rishard Khan

Any­one liv­ing in or vis­it­ing Chi­na who slips through T&T’s 14-day trav­el re­stric­tion and en­ters the coun­try may be sub­ject to quar­an­tine. Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed this in a state­ment to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

“It must be em­pha­sised and the as­sur­ance is giv­en that con­trary to me­dia re­ports, there are no sus­pect­ed or con­firmed cas­es of coro­n­avirus in the coun­try,” he said.

Yes­ter­day, al­most 10,000 coro­n­avirus cas­es were con­firmed in Chi­na with 213 deaths and 171 peo­ple who have re­cov­ered. The virus has been con­firmed in 20 coun­tries with the most out­side of Chi­na oc­cur­ring in Thai­land—nine—while 13 of the 20 af­fect­ed states have a hand­ful of cas­es. The US re­port­ed six cas­es and the UK, two.

On Thurs­day, Gov­ern­ment an­nounced a trav­el re­stric­tion of 14 days for peo­ple of any na­tion­al­i­ty com­ing to T&T from Chi­na. They will have to wait 14 days af­ter they’ve left Chi­na, to en­ter T&T.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi told Guardian Me­dia the ban took ef­fect yes­ter­day since he had is­sued the nec­es­sary le­gal no­tices and they were sent to the Pres­i­dent yes­ter­day for procla­ma­tion. The no­tices clas­si­fy coro­n­avirus as a dan­ger­ous in­fec­tious dis­ease.

Deyals­ingh told Par­lia­ment Gov­ern­ment’s mea­sures against the virus are in keep­ing with World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) stan­dards and guide­lines and con­sis­tent with the ba­sic need to pro­tect T&T’s health against all risk.

He al­so reaf­firmed that the trav­el ban will take ef­fect de­spite the WHO’s rec­om­men­da­tions against it.

“WHO makes rec­om­men­da­tions. Com­pli­ance is vol­un­tary,” he said in a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia.

He added, “In the event that a per­son presents at a port of en­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go, they may be sub­ject to quar­an­tine mea­sures. In this re­gard, CARPHA, who has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for test­ing in the re­gion, has ad­vised that it will have the ca­pac­i­ty to be­gin test­ing by next Mon­day.

“We’ve al­ready in­sti­tut­ed pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures and are in a state of readi­ness in the event we have to treat with the virus in terms of iso­la­tion cen­tres, quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties, health per­son­nel, per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and oth­er re­lat­ed re­sources to treat with it.”

Deyals­ingh said Gov­ern­ment is very mind­ful of the pop­u­la­tion’s con­cerns about the health threat if the coro­n­avirus is trans­mit­ted in­to T&T.

“Con­cerns are le­git­i­mate since this virus is con­sid­ered high­ly vir­u­lent in that it’s fast-spread­ing, in­fec­tious and ag­gres­sive. Gov­ern­ment is ful­ly aware of the risk fac­tors to Trinidad and To­ba­go and is in con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion and has im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures and re­sources to man­age this risk. Our im­me­di­ate fo­cus is to in­ter­rupt trans­mis­sion of the virus to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The min­is­ter said as of yes­ter­day ther­mal screen­ing of pas­sen­gers from the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, Pana­ma and the Unit­ed King­dom in­volved 292 flights and 24,229 pas­sen­gers and crew screened at Pi­ar­co and in To­ba­go.

“No per­son was found to be febrile (hav­ing fever),” he said.

Coro­n­avirus­es are a large fam­i­ly of res­pi­ra­to­ry virus­es that can cause dis­eases rang­ing from the com­mon cold to Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS) and the Se­vere Acute Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (SARS). He added that T&T had ex­pe­ri­ence in treat­ing with SARS dur­ing a 2004 /2006 out­break.

Yes­ter­day the Unit­ed States an­nounced a trav­el ban would be im­ple­ment­ed af­ter the US De­part­ment of State up­grad­ed its trav­el ad­vi­so­ry from Lev­el 3 (Re­con­sid­er Trav­el to Chi­na) to its high­est lev­el; 4 (Do not trav­el) as fa­tal­i­ties crossed 200.

The ad­vi­so­ry cit­ed the WHO’s la­belling of the virus as a pub­lic health emer­gency and ad­vised: “those cur­rent­ly in Chi­na should con­sid­er de­part­ing us­ing com­mer­cial means.”

The De­part­ment of State al­so re­quest­ed that all “non-es­sen­tial US gov­ern­ment per­son­nel de­fer trav­el to Chi­na in light of the nov­el coro­n­avirus.” Rus­sia, Mon­go­lia and North Ko­rea have al­so closed its bor­ders to trav­ellers from Chi­na in a bid to stop the spread of the virus.

Yes­ter­day both Amer­i­can Air­lines and Delta an­nounced they would be sus­pend­ing flights to and from the Chi­nese main­land. Amer­i­can Air­lines said it will sus­pend flights be­gin­ning Fri­day while Delta Air Lines said it would halt flights from Feb­ru­ary 6 through April 30. Unit­ed al­so in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to stop flights to the re­gion soon.

The Cruise Lines In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion (CLIA) has al­so adopt­ed a sim­i­lar re­stric­tion to T&T’s.

“CLIA Mem­bers have sus­pend­ed crew move­ments from main­land Chi­na and will de­ny board­ing to any in­di­vid­ual, whether guest or crew, who has trav­elled from or through main­land Chi­na with­in the pre­vi­ous 14 days,” its re­lease read.

Mean­while, the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, in a re­lease yes­ter­day said it is im­por­tant “that each per­son tries his best to pre­vent ac­quir­ing and spread­ing any vi­ral ill­ness. Rou­tine pre­ven­ta­tive pre­cau­tions such as; hand­wash­ing, cov­er­ing your mouth when you cough or sneeze are ef­fec­tive at help­ing to pre­vent the spread of most vi­ral ill­ness­es, in­clud­ing 2019-nCoV in­fec­tion.”

With the up­com­ing rise in tourism from Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions, the as­so­ci­a­tion urged cit­i­zens to seek im­me­di­ate med­ical at­ten­tion if they be­gin to ex­pe­ri­ence any of the symp­toms of the virus.