Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est step to pre­vent the en­try of coro­n­avirus in­to this coun­try has been to con­tact the lo­cal agents of all cruise lin­ers to en­sure ramp­ing-up of ques­tion­naires for pas­sen­gers on their health, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has con­firmed.

“The ma­jor point of con­cern (among ports) is the port of Port-of-Spain where cruise lin­ers come in,” Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day.

He was re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries on mea­sures to deal with the mys­te­ri­ous coro­n­avirus which arose in Chi­na re­cent­ly.

So far 106 peo­ple in Chi­na have been killed and 4,520 in­fect­ed.

Ger­many yes­ter­day re­port­ed its first case.

The US and Cana­da have ad­vised cit­i­zens to avoid all non-es­sen­tial trav­el to Chi­na.

Deyals­ingh said: “We have to try to bal­ance be­tween pan­ic and cau­tion. The last thing you want is a pan­icked pop­u­la­tion. The chances of this reach­ing T&T while re­mote, needs to be treat­ed se­ri­ous­ly and we’re do­ing that.”

Gov­ern­ment has in­stalled ther­mal-screen­ing at the air­ports for pas­sen­gers on ar­riv­ing flights in­clud­ing from North Amer­i­ca, Pana­ma and the UK. To date, 194 flights have been screened—14,380 pas­sen­gers and crew.

Deyals­ingh said hand-held screen­ing de­vices are lo­cat­ed at both ends of Pi­ar­co air­port. Elec­tron­ic bill­boards which were in­stalled ad­vise peo­ple com­ing from cer­tain parts of the world and have a cer­tain tem­per­a­ture, what they should do if they sus­pect ill­ness. Air­ports have stan­dards on how to treat with peo­ple with body tem­per­a­ture over 37.2 de­grees.

Deyals­ingh said ther­mal screen­ing de­vices have al­so been in­sti­tut­ed at the ports of Ch­aguara­mas, Port-of-Spain, King’s Wharf and Ce­dros. He said cruise lin­er crews must fill out de­c­la­ra­tions on pas­sen­gers on whether they have fevers or any oth­er ill­ness­es.

He said cruise ships usu­al­ly orig­i­nate from Mi­a­mi and Puer­to Ri­co and a ques­tion­naire which must be filled out be­fore board­ing ap­plies to all pas­sen­gers com­ing to the Caribbean and end­ing up in T&T. That process is be­ing ramped up,” he added.

So there’s a first, ini­tial pre-board­ing screen­ing where they have to an­swer ques­tions—that’s how we’re man­ag­ing the port of PoS.”

“But the chances of coro­n­avirus com­ing in through cruise ships are even more re­mote. You have to pay at­ten­tion to air­craft flights orig­i­nat­ing with pas­sen­gers from Chi­na. Most cruis­es com­ing to T&T would typ­i­cal­ly not have peo­ple who start­ed their jour­ney in Chi­na,” he said.

He said there’s a mul­ti-lay­er of ther­mal screen­ing of pas­sen­gers orig­i­nat­ing in Chi­na since they’re screened at air­ports where they get con­nect­ing flights, adding that screen­ing isn’t fool­proof as peo­ple could have no signs of fever.

Deyals­ingh said lo­cal air­ports have iso­la­tion ar­eas if a pas­sen­ger is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing coro­n­avirus—hav­ing a tem­per­a­ture above 37.2 de­grees and a trav­el his­to­ry in­volv­ing Chi­na. They’ll be as­sessed to see if quar­an­tine is re­quired. He said gowns, gloves and masks—trap­ping 95 per cent of pathogens—are be­ing dis­trib­uted through health au­thor­i­ties to health work­ers in the ef­fort.

Mean­while health of­fi­cials have de­nied ru­mours that two per­sons were screened at Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal for coro­n­avirus.

“I can say cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that is not true,” CEO of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, Davlin Thomas said yes­ter­day.

As of yes­ter­day, over 13,000 pas­sen­gers and crew, from near­ly 200 flights have been screened dur­ing the ther­mal screen­ing ex­er­cise at Pi­ar­co.

How­ev­er, these mea­sures are all part of the coun­try’s In­fec­tious Dis­ease Pro­to­col to de­tect and quick­ly iso­late per­sons who are ex­hibit­ing symp­toms of any in­fec­tious dis­ease

In the case of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, screened pas­sen­gers who re­quire fur­ther as­sess­ment or even iso­la­tion are tak­en to the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.

Two per­sons were sent to the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, for tests on H1N1 and Tu­ber­cu­lo­sis.

A $250,000 Iso­la­tion Unit, com­mis­sioned in 2014 dur­ing the Ebo­la cri­sis, was ac­ti­vat­ed on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 21, 2020.

The unit has a ster­il­i­sa­tion room at the en­trance where med­ical work­ers will get dressed in reusable haz­mat out­fits.

There is a plas­tic cov­ered en­trance lead­ing to the white iso­lat­ed rooms, each about the size of a small bed­room, equipped with a bed, wash­room, and a small ta­ble. There is al­so a sep­a­rate room that leads to the back of the build­ing where health work­ers are sani­tised be­fore un­dress­ing.