Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Just 11 out of the 21 med­ical stu­dents who were study­ing in Cu­ba have fi­nal­ly ar­rived home bring­ing a sigh of re­lief to the group.

The group was al­so grate­ful to the Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young and the Prime Min­is­ter for grant­i­ng them the ex­emp­tion to re­turn home.

The repa­tri­a­tion flight was via Caribbean Air­lines.

How­ev­er, some of the stu­dents could not make it on the repa­tri­a­tion flight as they were still stuck at a uni­ver­si­ty wait­ing on their dates for ex­am­i­na­tions.

Af­ter tak­ing off from Ha­vana, the flight stopped in St Maarten be­fore pro­ceed­ing to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port where it land­ed at 7.30 pm yes­ter­day.

From there, with a con­voy in­clu­sive of 10 reg­i­men­tal ve­hi­cles and po­lice cars, the group was whisked away around 9 pm to be­gin their state quar­an­tine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Debe Cam­pus.

The quar­an­tine will last the manda­to­ry 14 days be­fore they can re­unite with their fam­i­lies.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia, one par­ent was elat­ed in hav­ing the stu­dents re­turn home but at the same time ex­pressed a heavy heart for those of them who are still in Cu­ba.

“They have ar­rived. I am very hap­py that they are home al­though some of them couldn’t get to come home but we are hop­ing that when their ex­ams are over they will get to come home,” the par­ent said.

“The fam­i­lies are hap­py. The stu­dents are very hap­py to be home and we are all look­ing for­ward to see­ing and hear­ing that they are all COVID-19 free,” the par­ent added.

“But my heart goes out to all of them who are still there in Cu­ba and for their sake we are hop­ing that the ex­emp­tion still stands for the rest of them but those are things we have to ex­plore with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty when that time reach­es,” the par­ent said.

“We thank the T&T Gov­ern­ment, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and the Prime Min­is­ter for giv­ing them the ex­emp­tion and to the Guardian Me­dia for stand­ing with us along this jour­ney,” the par­ent said.

Af­ter ap­ply­ing for an ex­emp­tion to re­turn to T&T in March be­cause of the ex­treme short­age of sup­plies, the green light was giv­en to the stu­dents on Ju­ly 1 via an email sent to them by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young which stat­ed: “I have grant­ed ap­proval.”

Ini­tial­ly, the repa­tri­a­tion flight was sched­uled for last Sat­ur­day, Ju­ly 4 be­fore be­ing post­poned to to­day.