KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While quar­an­tined na­tion­als aboard Roy­al Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al’s En­chant­ment of the Seas are up­set that the Min­istry of Health took away their dai­ly ex­er­cise pe­ri­od, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties are not home.

Re­spond­ing to the com­plaints dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al COVID-19 up­date, Deyals­ingh said per­son­nel moved crew mem­bers to larg­er state­rooms so that each per­son can have more space. He said he un­der­stands the hard­ship they are fac­ing but said the min­istry is try­ing to pre­serve their lives. 
“It is a quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty; it is not your home, un­for­tu­nate­ly,” Deyals­ingh said.

“Quar­an­tine means that there will be some re­stric­tion to move­ment. We un­der­stand the psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma be­cause they have gone through hell and back. They have been out at sea, in some cas­es for two months, a month and a half. We un­der­stand all of this but we are fight­ing a glob­al pan­dem­ic ladies and gen­tle­men. I think this gets lost in the ad­vo­ca­cy to loosen up things.”

The na­tion­als on board said yes­ter­day that when they be­gan the 14-day quar­an­tine pe­ri­od they were al­lowed on the open deck twice dai­ly for 45 min­utes to ex­er­cise. This ac­tiv­i­ty was high­ly reg­u­lat­ed by ship of­fi­cials as they were es­cort­ed in small groups and man­dat­ed to abide by phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols, had to wear masks and were not al­lowed to con­gre­gate.

On Tues­day, how­ev­er, ship of­fi­cials in­formed the crew that the min­istry called for the ces­sa­tion of this ac­tiv­i­ty, cit­ing con­cerns about the phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing pro­to­col. 
“I find it ap­palling that the Min­istry of Health would think that it is ad­vis­able to keep any­one locked in a room 24/7 for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od with no fresh air and lim­it­ed abil­i­ty to ex­er­cise. The rooms are very small and do not al­low for much ac­tiv­i­ty. There are crew mem­bers on­board who are hy­per­ten­sive, striv­ing to man­age their weight, or oth­er­wise strug­gling just to stay sane in this sit­u­a­tion,” one crew mem­ber who did not want to be iden­ti­fied said.  
“Stud­ies show that among oth­er ben­e­fits, fresh air cleans­es your lungs, boosts your im­mune sys­tem and el­e­vates your sero­tonin lev­els. And we all know that dai­ly ex­er­cise is wide­ly rec­om­mend­ed as part of a healthy lifestyle. It is in­hu­mane and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to over­all health and well-be­ing (men­tal and phys­i­cal) to man­date that crew mem­bers stay in their rooms 24/7 for the next nine days, breath­ing on­ly re­cy­cled air while we fin­ish the rest of the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od. Even pris­on­ers get dai­ly yard time.”

But Deyals­ingh said this was for their safe­ty, es­pe­cial­ly as six crew mem­bers were tak­en off the ship over the week­end af­ter test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19. Those crew mem­bers are now at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.
Deyals­ingh said if there is any spread of the virus aboard the ship it will ex­tend the quar­an­tine time. Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry’s pro­to­col, if health per­son­nel find a pos­i­tive case dur­ing the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od it re­sets from the time the in­fect­ed per­son leaves.
“It means they can­not go home soon­er. We know this is dif­fi­cult. I can­not imag­ine what these peo­ple are go­ing through,” he said.

“We ap­pre­ci­ate their need for ad­vo­ca­cy and to con­tact the me­dia and for you to ad­vo­cate on their be­half. As a re­spon­si­ble Min­is­ter of Health, it is our pol­i­cy to not en­cour­age peo­ple on the cruise ship or any oth­er quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly where six pos­i­tive cas­es came out of, to have un­fet­tered com­mu­ni­ca­tion with each oth­er or phys­i­cal con­tact to wan­der around the cruise ship. It is for their own good and to make sure they can get off that fa­cil­i­ty as ear­ly as pos­si­ble and go back home and lead as nor­mal lives as pos­si­ble. It is a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion.”
He said men­tal health coun­selling is avail­able to those in need.

Mean­while, some 67 na­tion­als re­turned home yes­ter­day by air and sea and were im­me­di­ate­ly quar­an­tined at step-down fa­cil­i­ties.

A batch of 49 work­ers who were work­ing in the Gulf of Mex­i­co re­turned home via a Vi­vaAer­obus flight around 4 pm. Af­ter be­ing processed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port the work­ers were tak­en to the Kapok ho­tel in Port-of-Spain for their 14-day quar­an­tine.

An­oth­er 18 na­tion­als who were work­ing on var­i­ous Nor­we­gian Cruise Line ships ar­rived off T&T’s coast yes­ter­day morn­ing and af­ter be­ing processed were tak­en to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) Debe cam­pus to serve their quar­an­tine.

Ac­cord­ing to one of the re­turn­ing na­tion­als, they were pooled to­geth­er from their var­i­ous ves­sels and brought in­to T&T wa­ters aboard the Oceana Ma­ri­na. The work­ers were processed at the Cruise Ship Com­plex af­ter be­ing brought ashore be­fore be­ing whisked away to Debe.