Gail Alexan­der

Trav­ellers com­ing to T&T from Chi­na will have to wait 14 days to en­ter this coun­try af­ter leav­ing Chi­na. That re­stric­tion is be­ing placed on peo­ple who live in Chi­na or are vis­it­ing there.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced the mea­sure to cut the trans­mis­sion of the mys­te­ri­ous coro­n­avirus yes­ter­day. He said Cab­i­net had ac­cept­ed a sug­ges­tion for the re­stric­tion which will be im­ple­ment­ed as soon as cer­tain le­gal pro­vi­sions are com­plet­ed and will ap­ply to any­one com­ing to T&T from Chi­na re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty.

Deyals­ingh said, “If for in­stance, you left Chi­na on Feb­ru­ary 1, you won’t be al­lowed en­try un­til Feb­ru­ary 14. The 14-day pe­ri­od is be­cause the in­cu­ba­tion pe­ri­od for the coro­n­avirus is 14 days—this is how you in­ter­rupt trans­mis­sion of this virus.”

The min­is­ter an­nounced the move just as the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) deemed the coro­n­avirus an in­ter­na­tion­al pub­lic health emer­gency. How­ev­er, he said he didn’t see the sit­u­a­tion as a “rea­son­able” threat to Car­ni­val.

Deyals­ingh said the coro­n­avirus, which first arose in Wuhan, Chi­na, is now in 22 coun­tries with 7,800 in­fect­ed. To date, 170 deaths have been re­port­ed.

“The mor­tal­i­ty rate is 2.4 per cent. That is, for every 100 peo­ple get­ting it 2.4 per cent will die,” he ex­plained. “To halt trans­mis­sion, Hong Kong, for in­stance, has cut air and sea con­nec­tions to Chi­na. Rus­sia has closed land bor­ders to Chi­na. British Air­ways, Lufthansa and oth­er air­lines have can­celled flights to Chi­na, so even if you want to leave Chi­na, you can’t do so eas­i­ly,”

Deyals­ingh said in T&T 256 flights in­volv­ing 18,588 peo­ple have so far been screened and no sign of fever have been found to date.

He said re­ly­ing on Health Min­istry and WHO ex­perts, Cab­i­net was yes­ter­day in­formed of the trav­el re­stric­tion sug­ges­tion. He said there is prece­dent for this as T&T had is­sued visas re­stric­tions in 2014 for five African coun­tries dur­ing the Ebo­la out­break.

The min­is­ter said the cur­rent re­stric­tion plan re­quires a le­gal no­tice to be ap­proved in Par­lia­ment. This will al­low the chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer to im­ple­ment the re­stric­tion. The Health Min­istry will al­so des­ig­nate the coro­n­avirus as a dan­ger­ous in­fec­tious dis­ease as was done with Ebo­la. Once le­gal­i­ties are com­plet­ed, the re­stric­tion will be in force al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.

Deyals­ingh added that each coun­try has to do its risk as­sess­ment “and take what­ev­er mea­sures they feel nec­es­sary in the best in­ter­est of its pop­u­la­tion.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the im­pact of the move on Chi­nese work­ers in­volved in the Curepe In­ter­change, PoS Cen­tral Block and To­ba­go air­port ter­mi­nal projects, Deyals­ingh said, “Chi­nese work­ers al­ready in Trinidad and To­ba­go will con­tin­ue work. The main aim of this mea­sure is to pro­tect Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens. This is a health emer­gency, so any mi­nor in­ter­rup­tion in con­struc­tion projects ... when you do the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis, it’s more ben­e­fi­cial for the Gov­ern­ment to be very proac­tive in pro­tect­ing its lo­cal pop­u­la­tion and every­one liv­ing here even if it means at the ex­pense of de­lays in some projects, if there are go­ing to be de­lays.”

Asked whether the glob­al mood and T&T’s trav­el re­stric­tion would cause loss of Car­ni­val rev­enue, Deyals­ingh, re­it­er­at­ing Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect cit­i­zens, said the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom are T&T’s biggest but the US on­ly has five coro­n­avirus cas­es and the UK less.

“Car­ni­val will go on un­less some­thing dras­tic hap­pens,” he said.

Deyals­ingh as­sured that T&T has full ca­pac­i­ty to deal with any cas­es of sus­pect­ed or pos­si­ble coro­n­avirus. He said there are iso­la­tion ar­eas at hos­pi­tals, Cau­ra and will have more with the old COSTAATT build­ing in Port-of-Spain cur­rent­ly be­ing retro­fit­ted.

“And we have all the drugs need­ed. The health sys­tem is more than ca­pa­ble to deal with any even­tu­al­i­ty,” he said.