An­na-Lisa Paul

A night­mare.

This is how par­ents’ of stu­dents at­tend­ing the Maria Regi­na Grade School in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day de­scribed how their lives had turned fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment that their chil­dren’s class­mate’s par­ent had been con­firmed to have the COVID-19 virus.

In­di­cat­ing that they re­mained in lim­bo up to last night, the par­ents used the words “un­cer­tain­ty,” “fear,” “dis­ap­point­ment” and “anger” to ar­tic­u­late ex­act­ly how they were feel­ing.

They claimed that up to 5 pm yes­ter­day, no one from the Min­istry of Health had con­tact­ed them.

How­ev­er, around 6.30 pm yes­ter­day, one par­ent re­port­ed re­ceiv­ing a call from a pae­di­a­tri­cian who ad­vised her to con­tin­ue to do the re­spon­si­ble thing and self-iso­late for the time be­ing.

Com­mend­ing the school for the proac­tive move, she re­port­ed feel­ing more com­fort­ed then, say­ing the stig­ma now as­so­ci­at­ed with those whose chil­dren at­tend the school is one which will be hard to erase.

Busi­ness-own­er and par­ent Col­in Mitchell said his fam­i­ly felt re­ject­ed and tar­get­ed be­cause of what had hap­pened since Thurs­day. He said up to last night they re­mained un­aware of the sta­tus of the stu­dent whose par­ent test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, as they had not heard from ei­ther the min­istry or school.

The own­er of Sign­wave, Mitchell re­vealed, “From the time we got that in­for­ma­tion around 6 pm yes­ter­day (Thurs­day), we made the de­ci­sion to self-quar­an­tine the en­tire fam­i­ly, which in­cludes three chil­dren.”

His chil­dren – aged five, nine, and 11, all at­tend dif­fer­ent schools in the Port-of-Spain dis­trict.

He said, “We stayed home all day to­day (yes­ter­day) and have not tak­en vis­i­tors or al­lowed any­one in or out of our house. The five of us are just at home, locked up…try­ing to fig­ure out what’s the next step.”

Asked what the fam­i­ly’s next plan of ac­tion was, Mitchell said, “We have been call­ing as many peo­ple as we pos­si­bly can, try­ing to find out what is the sta­tus of the stu­dent and all we found out from sec­ondary and ter­tiary sources is that he was test­ed and we were look­ing for­ward to a re­sult to­day.”

How­ev­er, Mitchell said that in­for­ma­tion ap­peared in­cor­rect.

He went on, “We are very con­cerned and very in­se­cure gen­er­al­ly, right now. And we would like to get some guid­ance on what the pro­to­col is be­cause there might be fam­i­lies out there who are not do­ing what we’re do­ing.”

Say­ing his fam­i­ly had re­frained from go­ing to work, school and even the su­per­mar­ket, Mitchell ap­pealed, “We want some guid­ance. I am wor­ried now be­cause we are go­ing in­to the week­end.”

He ques­tioned if it was too ear­ly or un­rea­son­able to ex­pect more from the au­thor­i­ties, as it had on­ly been 24 hours since the coun­try’s first case was con­firmed.

“I was ex­pect­ing to hear more quick­ly. I was hop­ing that a press con­fer­ence would be held every af­ter­noon to keep the na­tion abreast of what’s go­ing on,” Mitchell said.

The two ap­plaud­ed the move by school prin­ci­pal Eliz­a­beth Crouch to im­me­di­ate­ly close the fa­cil­i­ty for san­i­tiz­ing. How­ev­er, they in­sist that ques­tions must be an­swered as they can­not re­main in lim­bo, in­def­i­nite­ly.