Gail Alexan­der

As of Mon­day, some 121 peo­ple had breached their quar­an­tine or­der and the req­ui­site ac­tion was tak­en by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says.

He gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day in re­ply to queries by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Sen­a­tor Wade Mark on the mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems put in place for peo­ple who have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 and have been or­dered in­to home quar­an­tine.

Deyals­ingh said the min­istry, in con­junc­tion with TTPS, mon­i­tors and eval­u­ates COVID-19-pos­i­tive pa­tients in home quar­an­tine to en­sure strict ad­her­ence to the health guide­lines.

He not­ed, “Ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions (No. 16), 2021, Reg­u­la­tion 11 pro­vides where a per­son is COVID-19-pos­i­tive and has been is­sued a Quar­an­tine Or­der to quar­an­tine at their home and he/she breach­es the said Or­der, he/she is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of two hun­dred and fifty thou­sand dol­lars ($250,000) and to im­pris­on­ment for six months.”

On claims that peo­ple who breached quar­an­tine were vis­it­ing su­per­mar­kets and oth­er places, Deyals­ingh said he could on­ly go on in­for­ma­tion the min­istry has—which was that 121 had so far breached their quar­an­tine.

Deyals­ingh said ac­cord­ing to guide­lines is­sued by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, the Health Min­istry has im­ple­ment­ed and en­forced the self-quar­an­tine mea­sures to mit­i­gate and re­duce the trans­mis­sion of COVID-19 to oth­er mem­bers of house­holds.

That in­volves a telemed­i­cine strat­e­gy, where 150 of­fi­cers were trained and de­ployed to the of­fices of the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cers of Health.

Deyals­ingh said they do (a) con­duct con­tact trac­ing of COVID-19-pos­i­tive pa­tients; (b) track and mon­i­tor such pa­tients and pro­vide on­go­ing med­ical ad­vice for re­cov­ery; (c) track and mon­i­tor pa­tients who were sup­plied with pulse oxime­ters to man­age, record and re­port to these of­fi­cers the sta­tus of the oxy­gen lev­els.

If pa­tients ex­hib­it read­ings of oxy­gen be­low the re­quired lev­el and/or are con­tin­u­ous­ly show­ing symp­toms and the sever­i­ty of ill­ness wors­ens, arrange­ments are made for im­me­di­ate treat­ment and care at the Cou­va, Cau­ra or Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tals, he said.

The sys­tem al­so en­sures ad­her­ence to the quar­an­tine mea­sures in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the TTPS. These mea­sures in­clude sign­ing of the Quar­an­tine Or­der/cer­tifi­cate and ad­vice on the ad­her­ence to pub­lic health mea­sures.

Such ad­vice in­volves stay­ing in the home and iso­lat­ing from oth­ers, the min­is­ter not­ed.

Deyals­ingh added, “If you can­not iso­late at home, per­sons are of­fered the op­por­tu­ni­ty, free of charge, to iso­late in one of our state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties - this is im­por­tant.”

Those quar­an­tined must al­so en­sure strict mea­sures of iso­la­tion and where pos­si­ble, use sep­a­rate fa­cil­i­ties (eg bath­rooms) and not share uten­sils as far as pos­si­ble.

Sani­ti­sa­tion of all ar­eas of use and wash­ing of hands fre­quent­ly is re­quired. Peo­ple are ad­vised not to go to work or be in pub­lic ar­eas; not to al­low/ac­com­mo­date vis­i­tors at home, they must wear a mask around oth­ers; and have food, med­ica­tion/sup­plies de­liv­ered to them.

On an­oth­er query, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds de­tailed COVID-19 sani­ti­sa­tion mea­sures to safe­guard T&T Po­lice Ser­vice of­fi­cers at po­lice sta­tions.

These ranged from gen­er­al sani­ti­sa­tion and signs at po­lice fa­cil­i­ties, to pro­vid­ing sani­ti­sa­tion prod­ucts for all po­lice fa­cil­i­ties and ve­hi­cles; and re­quir­ing peo­ple vis­it­ing sta­tions to wear face masks and sani­tise hands at sani­ti­sa­tion ar­eas be­fore en­ter­ing the fa­cil­i­ty.

Hinds said of­fi­cers must main­tain a three to six-foot dis­tance from per­sons giv­ing re­ports or be­ing in­ter­viewed and must wear face­masks and gloves while tak­ing fin­ger­prints from Cer­tifi­cates of Char­ac­ter ap­pli­cants.

Any mem­ber of the pub­lic ex­hibit­ing COVID-19 symp­toms must re­turn home and re­vis­it a sta­tion when they’ve re­cov­ered, he said.

Hinds said many sta­tions al­so have tem­per­a­ture test­ing equip­ment.