Renu­ka Singh

Na­tion­als aboard the En­chant­ment of the Sea cruise ship will be moved to State quar­an­tine on land af­ter pos­i­tive COVID-19 tests aboard the ship.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health said it was as a re­sult of three re­cent cas­es that took the fig­ure up to 126.

News of the change came af­ter a meet­ing in­volv­ing the min­istries of Health and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty as well as the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T yes­ter­day.

The Min­istry of Health said that in light of the new pos­i­tive cas­es, the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to let the na­tion­als dis­em­bark and be quar­an­tined by the State on June 30 (to­mor­row) to be bet­ter mon­i­tored.

“The na­tion­als will be held in quar­an­tine, for a short pe­ri­od of time, where an­oth­er round of PCR tests will be con­duct­ed dur­ing this week. Up­on re­ceipt and re­view of these re­sults, a de­ter­mi­na­tion will be made as to when they can be safe­ly re­unit­ed with their fam­i­lies,” the Min­istry of Health said.

The Min­istry said while it em­pathis­es with the peo­ple un­der quar­an­tine, the steps are tak­en to en­sure the con­tin­ued safe­ty of these na­tion­als as well as the rest of the na­tion.

More than 300 na­tion­als re­turned to T&T on June 14 aboard the ves­sel. A to­tal of nine of them test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

As of last evening, the to­tal num­ber of cas­es reg­is­tered in T&T was 126.