The Min­istry of Health is await­ing the au­top­sy re­sult on the Trinida­di­an na­tion­al who died aboard a repa­tri­a­tion flight from New York on Sat­ur­day.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the au­top­sy on Hen­ry Grant was be­ing per­formed in Puer­to Ri­co, where the flight was di­vert­ed af­ter it left New York bound for T&T, to de­ter­mine the cause of the man’s death.

“The last in­for­ma­tion I had from the CMOH was that an au­top­sy would have been in the process of be­ing per­formed in Puer­to Ri­co. Of course, when we get the re­sults of those find­ings we would have a bet­ter idea of what that in­di­vid­ual would have passed away from and it would guide the process go­ing for­ward in terms of the lev­el of ex­po­sure of those in­di­vid­u­als,” he said.

He not­ed that un­til that time, the na­tion­als will con­tin­ue the repa­tri­a­tion process in ac­cor­dance to the cur­rent COVID-19 pro­to­col for those com­ing from a medi­um/high-risk coun­try.

“As of now, they will con­tin­ue to do for (sic) medi­um to high-risk coun­tries. A sev­en-day quar­an­tine with a test on day one and day sev­en as is the nor­mal when they get in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

The Caribbean Air­lines flight left the JFK air­port on Sat­ur­day night bound for Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port but was rerout­ed to Puer­to Ri­co af­ter the man be­gan hav­ing se­vere med­ical is­sues.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to one pas­sen­ger on board who said the el­der­ly man ap­peared to have died be­fore the air­craft land­ed in Puer­to Ri­co. The pas­sen­ger said the man did not re­ceive any med­ical treat­ment while the plane was in the air and when the air­craft land­ed, para­medics came on­board but af­ter their ini­tial as­sess­ment did not at­tend to the man.

↔—Rishard Khan