Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is urg­ing cit­i­zens to “use com­mon sense” to pro­tect them­selves against COVID-19, es­pe­cial­ly if they are think­ing about trav­el­ling through or to coun­tries where con­firmed cas­es have been iden­ti­fied.

Deyals­ingh spoke about cit­i­zens’ per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, safe­ty pre­cau­tions and trav­el as the virus con­tin­ues to spread glob­al­ly dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the min­istry’s Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters yes­ter­day.

“I am ask­ing the pop­u­la­tion to ex­er­cise com­mon sense in trav­el­ling. If you ab­solute­ly have to go on a long in­ter­na­tion­al com­mer­cial flight, go. If you can de­lay that, if you’re go­ing to a birth­day par­ty, a wed­ding, a fete, think twice but if you ab­solute­ly have to trav­el, you have to trav­el. That is the best com­mon-sense ad­vice I can give about trav­el­ling,” he said.

Deyals­ingh, along with the min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and Cab­i­net, have al­so de­cid­ed “that all non-es­sen­tial trav­el for min­istry per­son­nel will stop.”

He rec­om­mend­ed “com­mon sense so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures” to pre­vent any pos­si­ble trans­mis­sion of the virus.

“No more so­cial hug­ging, no more so­cial kiss­ing. If you are ill stay home and get ex­am­ined, iso­late your­self un­til you have a clean bill of health,” he said.

Deyals­ingh al­so urged par­ents to keep their chil­dren away from school if they are ex­hibit­ing flu-like symp­toms “be­cause, in that en­vi­ron­ment, one child, one per­son, one teacher with COVID-19, can in­fect an en­tire school.”

He al­so ap­pealed to re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions to re­con­sid­er how they hold their ac­tiv­i­ties. (See page 21)

There are cur­rent­ly no cas­es of COVID-19 in T&T, he said, not­ing that the test on a pas­sen­ger who ar­rived here on a flight from Cana­da on Mon­day night and had ex­hib­it­ed flu-like symp­toms, had come back neg­a­tive.

How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh said in an at­tempt to main­tain this sta­tus for T&T, dis­cus­sions are be­ing held with diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Unit­ed King­don, Unit­ed States and Cana­da to im­ple­ment ex­it screen­ing for pas­sen­gers des­tined for this coun­try. These three ter­ri­to­ries are close­ly linked with T&T and have con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19, he said. The min­is­ter said Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram will be meet­ing with tech­ni­cal per­son­nel at diplo­mat­ic mis­sions and abroad to come up with mea­sures for ex­it screen­ing of flights. This will be ap­plied to air­ports with di­rect flights to this coun­try, such as Gatwick and Heathrow in the Unit­ed King­dom, Lester B. Pear­son in Toron­to, Cana­da and Mi­a­mi In­ter­na­tion­al, John F Kennedy In­ter­na­tion­al and Hous­ton in the Unit­ed States.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO), as of March 4 there were 108 con­firmed cas­es in the Unit­ed States, 30 in Cana­da and 51 in the Unit­ed King­dom. The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, ex­plained that no trav­el re­stric­tions would be placed for these coun­tries, as their cas­es have been grad­u­al­ly in­creas­ing over a month-long pe­ri­od as op­posed to coun­tries such as Iran.

“When you look at their epi­demi­ol­o­gy, they seem to have it very well un­der con­trol as op­posed to South Ko­rea (which has 5,328 cas­es) and Iran (2,336 cas­es) where there was an ex­plo­sive in­crease in cas­es...the pub­lic health sys­tems in these coun­tries are very well de­vel­oped, they have iso­lat­ed cas­es, they have found their in­dex cas­es most of the times...there is no talk of a trav­el re­stric­tion for those three coun­tries un­less some­thing ab­solute­ly dras­tic hap­pens,” he said.