Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

T&T has be­come the sec­ond Caribbean coun­try to de­tect a case of the Omi­cron vari­ant of con­cern. The in­fect­ed per­son was a re­turn­ing fe­male na­tion­al who trav­elled from New York via Pana­ma on De­cem­ber 9.

The dis­cov­ery prompt­ed the Gov­ern­ment to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing its im­por­ta­tion.

How­ev­er, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty as­sures lo­cal au­thor­i­ties weren’t at fault.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced yes­ter­day that the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ ge­net­ic se­quenc­ing team de­tect­ed the vari­ant of con­cern.

How­ev­er, he de­scribed the cir­cum­stances un­der which the woman en­tered as “very very dis­turb­ing.”

“In New York, the per­son was al­lowed to board a flight with a pos­i­tive PCR test. The per­son then trav­elled to Pana­ma where they pre­sent­ed a neg­a­tive Anti­gen test,” he said.

Un­der the cur­rent pro­to­cols, PCR (poly­merase chain re­ac­tion) tests are the on­ly recog­nised test to gain en­try in­to the coun­try. The T&T Trav­el Pass re­quires that a neg­a­tive PCR test be sub­mit­ted with­in 72 hours of ar­rival in­to the coun­try.

“What is con­cern­ing is the be­hav­iour of the in­di­vid­ual- know­ing­ly, know­ing­ly do­ing this. Sec­ond­ly, that the screen­ing at the air­port in New York did not work,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Deyals­ingh, the dis­crep­an­cy was de­tect­ed by the Port Health agents when the trav­eller ar­rived on Thurs­day.

“Luck­i­ly our Trinidad Port Health picked up the fact that this per­son was al­lowed to board with a pos­i­tive PCR test,” he said.

The pas­sen­ger was im­me­di­ate­ly iso­lat­ed and placed in­to a step-down fa­cil­i­ty by the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health (CMOH) where she re­mains.

He said in­for­ma­tion on the trav­eller and air­line will be for­ward­ed to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty which will in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds told Guardian Me­dia that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties weren’t to blame for the pas­sen­ger’s ar­rival.

“Anti­gen tests is not our re­quire­ment. Co­pa (Air­lines) is aware that what we want is a neg­a­tive PCR test so the ball dropped there as well from the pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion we’ve had,” he said.

“Our peo­ple and our sys­tem worked and we have to be con­grat­u­la­to­ry to these peo­ple but of course the ball dropped out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go and fell to us.”

He said as part of the min­istry’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the gov­ern­ment will be reaf­firm­ing its en­try pro­to­cols to the air­line.

“Things hap­pen, it’s un­for­tu­nate and we are now, in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of this mat­ter will make our po­si­tion very clear to those who may have been re­spon­si­ble for this de­vel­op­ment and re­mind them and reaf­firm to them, the need for them- just as we do with se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters- to en­sure that dan­ger­ous peo­ple and dan­ger­ous things are not trans­shipped from one coun­try to a next,” he said.

He said he hoped that an­oth­er in­ci­dent like this does not oc­cur again in the fu­ture.

The Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the trav­eller could be charged with breach­ing the T&T Trav­el Pass reg­u­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site: “It is a crim­i­nal of­fence to up­load or present false doc­u­men­ta­tion (such as blank pa­per, vac­ci­na­tion records, or COVID-19 test cer­tifi­cates). If charged and found guilty, you may be sub­ject­ed to a penal­ty of three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand Trinidad & To­ba­go dol­lars ($350,000) and six months in jail on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion.”

Deyals­ingh added that the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will for­ward the in­for­ma­tion to all rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties so the nec­es­sary fines “can be im­posed on both the in­di­vid­ual and/or the air­line.”

“We take this very, very se­ri­ous­ly,” he said.

The Omi­cron vari­ant is be­lieved to be even more trans­mis­si­ble than the Delta vari­ant. The Min­is­ter of Health said the CMOH quar­an­tined and test­ed the near­by pas­sen­gers on the flight in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols.

“Those per­sons two rows in front, two rows be­hind and two rows each to the side all have neg­a­tive PCR tests. All are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. They are in quar­an­tine and will be mon­i­tored,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO), 57 coun­tries have con­firmed cas­es of the Omi­cron vari­ant of Con­cern to date. Last week, Bermu­da be­came the first Caribbean coun­try to de­tect the vari­ant.

While pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion sug­gests the vari­ant may cause less se­vere dis­ease, Unit­ed King­dom Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son con­firmed yes­ter­day that at least one per­son in the UK died while in­fect­ed with it.