Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment mem­bers are on height­ened COVID alert.

This, af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was test­ed for COVID-19 fol­low­ing ex­po­sure on Au­gust 10 to some­one who test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

Row­ley’s test was neg­a­tive.

Row­ley, who re­vealed the sit­u­a­tion around noon yes­ter­day on his Face­book page, said he has been ad­vised to self-quar­an­tine.

His an­nounce­ment fol­lowed for­mer UNC MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh’s con­fir­ma­tion on Thurs­day that he (Gopeesingh) has COVID-19.

Al­so yes­ter­day In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty leader Jack Warn­er con­firmed he’ll be test­ing for COVID-19 af­ter two of his em­ploy­ees test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

Row­ley stat­ed on his Face­book page yes­ter­day, “It came to my at­ten­tion, last night that on Mon­day 10th, I was ex­posed to some­one who lat­er test­ed pos­i­tive for Covid-19.”

“I have been test­ed and the re­sults are neg­a­tive. Out of an abun­dance of cau­tion I have been ad­vised to re­main in quar­an­tine at home un­til next Mon­day when the full four­teen-day pe­ri­od would have ex­pired.”

“Giv­en the cir­cum­stances un­der which we all now live I once again take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­peal to ALL cit­i­zens to each do their part to help fight this virus by strict­ly fol­low­ing the health in­struc­tions of reg­u­lar at­ten­tive hand wash­ing and san­i­ti­za­tion, phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and no con­gre­ga­tion in groups above five per­sons and ad­di­tion­al­ly most im­por­tant­ly wear a mask once out­side the home or in an en­closed space which is be­ing shared at close quar­ters.

“With the dis­ci­pline that is ex­pect­ed of us to­geth­er, we can fight and beat the un­con­trolled ex­pan­sion of this virus.”

This will be Row­ley’s sec­ond self- quar­an­tine. He had al­so quar­an­tined when he re­turned from a Ghana-Lon­don trip in ear­ly March.

PNM of­fi­cials couldn’t shed light on where the per­son who test­ed pos­i­tive might have been. They said strict COVID pro­to­cols were fol­lowed at Bal­isi­er House where Row­ley was on elec­tion night.

There’s been no word on the rest of the Row­ley fam­i­ly and quar­an­ti­ning. Row­ley’s wife Sharon was at his side on elec­tion night at Bal­isi­er House. Their el­dest daugh­ter and her fam­i­ly had al­so been res­i­dent with them at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre. The fam­i­ly was al­so at Pres­i­dent’s House for Wednes­day’s swear­ing-in func­tion.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh didn’t re­ply yes­ter­day on the sit­u­a­tion.

The White­hall of­fice which Row­ley used was be­ing sani­tised yes­ter­day, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said, as the staff was sent home. It was pro­ject­ed that the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter at St Clair will al­so be sani­tised.

At Pres­i­dent’s House, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Ad­vis­er Cheryl Lala con­firmed sani­tis­ing was be­ing done - with fog­ging- in an arrange­ment that was or­gan­ised pri­or to Wednes­day’s func­tion. She said the plan­ning of the func­tion was in the works for more than three weeks for who­ev­er won the elec­tion. Plan­ning was done with the Coun­ty Med­ical of­fi­cer who went through all rooms and rec­om­mend­ed what should be done to have the func­tion un­der COVID pro­to­cols.

Lala said apart from the MPs who sat in the ball­room where the Oath of Of­fice was ad­min­is­tered to ap­pointees, MPs were seat­ed in three oth­er rooms. Every­one who en­tered the com­pound was tem­per­a­ture-test­ed and sani­ti­sa­tion was done. Any­one sneez­ing, cough­ing or show­ing symp­toms wouldn’t have been al­lowed to en­ter, Lala added.

Min­is­ters re­spond

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga yes­ter­day said that all safe­ty pro­to­cols were ob­served at Pres­i­dent’s House on Wednes­day when the prime min­is­ter MPs took their oaths.

Sev­er­al Min­is­ters such as Colm Im­bert, Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and oth­er front-lin­ers who were in the same room with Row­ley didn’t an­swer yes­ter­day on whether they’d been test­ed or will be.

How­ev­er, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said she was test­ed for the virus af­ter re­cent­ly feel­ing flu-ish and was found to be neg­a­tive.

Robin­son-Reg­is said, “I’ve had no sus­pi­cion that I was ex­posed to any­one with COVID, but at one point af­ter the cam­paign, I start­ed feel­ing a bit flu-ish. I had no fever but felt headachy and some dizzy­ness so out of an abun­dance of cau­tion I did go and have the COVID test and it was neg­a­tive.”

“Since the cam­paign, I have been more or less in­side. I haven’t gone to (Plan­ning) yet, but I know the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries are very dili­gent. The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry where I was, did have some­one in the Ac­counts sec­tion who’d test­ed pos­i­tive. They shut the unit down and all staff were quar­an­tined and test­ed. Al­so, a mes­sen­ger there test­ed pos­i­tive and more tests were done. But they’re fol­low­ing pro­to­cols.”

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi had sat by him­self, in so­cial dis­tanced spac­ing in the front row at Pres­i­dent’s House, abreast of Row­ley’s seat. He said he’s lim­it­ed cir­cu­la­tion among oth­ers to min­i­mal post-elec­tion and prac­tices all pro­to­cols.

“I have a per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to every­one - min­istry, rel­a­tives, peo­ple around me. My mask is on all of the time, I ex­am­ine all the lit­er­a­ture. None of us is tak­ing this light­ly,” Al-Rawi said.

He added, “In this sit­u­a­tion, one should first try to main­tain one’s health - keep your im­mune sys­tem as strong as pos­si­ble. It’s no se­cret I take my health se­ri­ous­ly. I ex­er­cise reg­u­lar­ly, fol­low med­ical ad­vice and have a care­ful di­et.”

“What hurts me how­ev­er is I haven’t been able to see my con­stituents per­son­al­ly to give them a huge thank-you as I want to. Many have reached out to me. We dis­cussed it in a larg­er cir­cle re­cent­ly and the Prime Min­is­ter asked us keep away from ac­tiv­i­ties like large gath­er­ings. But when it is safe, I’ll see them.”

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who’d head­ed the PNM’s Ch­agua­nas East cam­paign, said, “Dur­ing elec­tions, we were very COVID sen­si­tive, I haven’t re­ceived any call from Health about be­ing ex­posed to any pri­ma­ry con­tact. But I’m ob­serv­ing pre­cau­tions stren­u­ous­ly. I have my Vi­t­a­min C right here next to me. I’m over 60 and I have my chal­lenges as we all do from time to time.”

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox added, “I wasn’t in con­tact with the Prime Min­is­ter so I don’t need tests. But I’m ob­serv­ing pro­to­cols ex­tra stern­ly since my moth­er, 88 is very high risk with key ill­ness­es. The Min­istry’s al­so ob­serv­ing pro­to­cols strict­ly as they had come is­sues with the virus be­fore.”