...said to be neg­a­tive for COVID-19

A 24-year-old man cur­rent­ly is on the run and be­lieved to be in hid­ing, af­ter hav­ing es­caped manda­to­ry quar­an­tine from the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex on Mon­day night, in the dread­ed be­lief that he is pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus.

How­ev­er, at Tues­day’s Gov­ern­ment me­dia con­fer­ence to up­date the pub­lic on the pan­dem­ic, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Stu­art Young, con­firmed that the young man ran away from the hos­pi­tal, and that he did con­tact the Min­is­ter of Health and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

Min­is­ter Young in­di­cat­ed that the in­di­vid­ual had been in quar­an­tine and de­cid­ed that he no longer want­ed to be there and ran off.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter gave the as­sur­ance that there was no need for pan­ic as the man did not test pos­i­tive for COVID-19, and he plead­ed with the man's rel­a­tives, friends and res­i­dents in his com­mu­ni­ty to en­sure that he con­tact the po­lice.

Min­is­ter Young then gave an ex­pla­na­tion for the in­for­ma­tion sent out by the po­lice, say­ing the of­fi­cer may have been too hasty in his ac­tions.

On Tues­day morn­ing, Ch­agua­nas May­or Van­dana Mo­hit post­ed this mes­sage on her Face­book time­line:

“Res­i­dents of Jern­ing­ham Junc­tion in par­tic­u­lar stay in­doors. Yes, it was just con­firmed with TTPS that they are in search of a young man who should at this time be in quar­an­tine due to a pos­si­ble risk. Please ad­here to warn­ings. Please…"

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that po­lice of­fi­cers car­ried out sev­er­al search­es for the man, whom they say is well known to them, but are yet to lo­cate him.

Ac­cord­ing to the Quar­an­tine Act, a per­son who de­fies quar­an­tine can be fined $50,000 and jailed for six months.

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Sto­ry by RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT