Al­most nine and a half hours af­ter Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh promised to trans­fer 30 re­cov­er­ing COVID-19 pa­tients to a con­va­les­cent fa­cil­i­ty in Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment, San­gre Grande, the group was tak­en there un­der the cov­er of dark­ness.

Deyals­ingh an­nounced the move dur­ing Sat­ur­day's me­dia brief­ing up­dat­ing the coun­try on the COVID-19 cri­sis af­fect­ing the coun­try.

Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment res­i­dents have been protest­ing the min­istry’s de­ci­sion to lo­cate the step-down fa­cil­i­ty in their com­mu­ni­ty.

But re­it­er­at­ing that step-down fa­cil­i­ties were need­ed so that re­cov­er­ing pa­tients could con­va­lesce in a qui­et and iso­lat­ed lo­ca­tion be­fore they are dis­charged in­to the care of their loved ones, Deyals­ingh again ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to ex­er­cise com­pas­sion, pa­tience and tol­er­ance on this is­sue durng Sat­ur­day's press con­fer­ence.

De­spite this ap­peal, Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment res­i­dents on Sat­ur­day night said they were scared about what the fu­ture holds as they fear their lives are now in dan­ger with the ar­rival of the pa­tients.

Some of the res­i­dents re­port­ed be­ing awak­ened around 11.34 pm as a ve­hic­u­lar con­voy ar­rived at Bridge Road. Es­cort­ed by a large num­ber of T&T De­fence Force and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice of­fi­cers, the con­tin­gent was said to have been dri­ven straight on­to the fenced com­pound of the step-down fa­cil­i­ty as most of the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty slept.

A res­i­dent, who hap­pened to be in his gallery when the con­tin­gent ar­rived, told Guardian Me­dia, “The pa­tients were brought in two large PTSC bus­es and one Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corp bus.”

An­oth­er added that al­though the fa­cil­i­ty was bright and busy around mid­night, it ap­peared as if the con­voy was at­tempt­ing to main­tain a cer­tain lev­el of qui­et, as the lights were turned off on the ve­hi­cles which had been parked along Bridge Road.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed an el­der­ly woman who lives close to the fa­cil­i­ty, she claimed to be de­spon­dent af­ter learn­ing of the pa­tients’ ar­rival in the area.

She ques­tioned, “Why they do­ing this in the dead of night? What they hid­ing? Why they didn’t bring them here in the day­light and let every­one know what hap­pen­ing up here?”

On Thurs­day, copies of a pe­ti­tion bear­ing the sig­na­tures of 101 res­i­dents were de­liv­ered to the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent and the Unit­ed Na­tions of­fice in Port-of-Spain.

In the six-page doc­u­ment, the res­i­dents ex­pressed their dis­plea­sure that re­cov­er­ing COVID-19 pa­tients would be tak­en in­to the close-knit com­mu­ni­ty, since more than 70 per cent of them are over 70 and suf­fer­ing with one or more co-mor­bid con­di­tion such as di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion.

How­ev­er, on Fri­day fi­nal prepa­ra­tions on the fa­cil­i­ty, which pre­vi­ous­ly housed a home for the el­der­ly named Ag­ing at Home, were com­plet­ed. Deyals­ingh then an­nounced the fa­cil­i­ty would have its first re­cov­er­ing pa­tients on Sat­ur­day.