KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As hun­dreds of cit­i­zens re­quest ex­emp­tions to re-en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says Gov­ern­ment may con­sid­er ask­ing peo­ple to pay for their COVID-19 quar­an­tine stays.He made the com­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 up­date in re­sponse to ques­tions on whether T&T could fol­low Ja­maica’s pol­i­cy for its re­turn­ing na­tion­als. Ear­li­er this month, Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs and For­eign Trade Kam­i­na John­son said some na­tion­als would have to pay US$20 per day for the 14 days of their manda­to­ry quar­an­tine.

Deyals­ingh said while he did not have a firm de­ci­sion on the is­sue, it was some­thing he would dis­cuss with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young.
“On the is­sue of pay­ing for quar­an­tine, I think it is some­thing that may have to be con­sid­ered as the num­ber goes up and up. I see Ja­maica is tak­ing that stance. I do not have a firm de­ci­sion as yet,” Deyals­ingh said.
Quar­an­tine has been cost­ly for the state, with a few mil­lion al­ready spent on re­turn­ing na­tion­als. Giv­ing rough es­ti­mates, Deyals­ingh said the Gov­ern­ment paid about $1 mil­lion to set up the Na­tion­al Ten­nis Cen­tre in Tacarigua, which housed some 33 na­tion­als who re­turned from Bar­ba­dos. There was a sim­i­lar cost to set up the quar­an­tine ac­com­mo­da­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Debe Cam­pus. The uni­ver­si­ty it­self spent a few hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars on perime­ter work. These fig­ures do not in­clude the cost of food, staff and con­sum­ables. The Gov­ern­ment al­so rent­ed a fa­cil­i­ty in Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment, San­gre Grande for $120,000 per month for three months and paid $85,000 per month for Camp Ba­lan­dra.
Deyals­ingh ad­mit­ted fund­ing this process was an is­sue.

“It is a very ex­pen­sive process to ac­com­mo­date this and so far the tax­pay­er has been car­ry­ing that bur­den. I want to thank most sin­cere­ly the tax­pay­er for their gen­eros­i­ty at this time,”
he said.

The Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly repa­tri­at­ing cruise ship em­ploy­ees from the Unit­ed States and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents in var­i­ous Caribbean is­lands.

Up to yes­ter­day, Roy­al Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al’s Vi­sions of the Seas re­mained in Bar­ba­dos wa­ters await­ing ap­proval from the Gov­ern­ment to repa­tri­ate 345 na­tion­als. Those na­tion­als will be test­ed for COVID-19 on ar­rival in T&T and un­der­go a 14-day quar­an­tine pe­ri­od aboard the ves­sel. 
Mean­while, 29 Tri­ni crew mem­bers aboard the Car­ni­val Fan­ta­sy cruise ship are ex­pect­ed dis­em­bark in Port-of-Spain to­day. A crew mem­ber, who did not wish to be iden­ti­fied, said yes­ter­day they were ex­pect­ed to be test­ed for COVID-19 and tak­en to a quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty.
Mean­while, as T&T cit­i­zens in the US call for lo­cals to join the #black­lives­mat­ter protest over the po­lice killing of George Floyd in Min­neapo­lis, Deyals­ingh main­tained that the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance on­ly al­lows for gath­er­ings of five and less. 
Dur­ing the con­fer­ence, he showed face shields made of plas­tic and fab­ric, done lo­cal­ly, that cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $30 to make. He rec­om­mend­ed these for peo­ple with asth­ma, bron­chi­tis and Chron­ic Ob­struc­tive Pul­monary Dis­ease (COPD) and oth­er dis­eases that make wear­ing nor­mal face masks dif­fi­cult.