The in­ci­dent over the week­end in which close to 40 Peren­co Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed off­shore work­ers re­port­ed­ly test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 must cer­tain­ly be rais­ing alarm bells for Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials.

Even more shock­ing are re­ports yes­ter­day from work­ers still on the plat­form that there re­main sus­pect­ed ac­tive cas­es on du­ty. Should this be the case, both the Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of En­er­gy, un­der whose aegis such an op­er­a­tion falls, need to im­me­di­ate­ly in­ves­ti­gate this mat­ter and take the nec­es­sary cor­rec­tive ac­tion.

The ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the fall­out from this in­ci­dent could have dire con­se­quences for the coun­try, since, if we are to take the work­ers at their word, some of them may have pos­si­bly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed both on­ly fam­i­ly and friends but oth­er sup­port ser­vice work­ers be­fore the virus was de­tect­ed. Fur­ther­more, the com­pa­ny al­so has with­in its ranks French na­tion­als who al­so func­tion on the plat­form. This adds an­oth­er ma­jor dy­nam­ic to the sit­u­a­tion, since France is now try­ing to pro­tect its cit­i­zens from the newest strain of the virus re­cent­ly de­tect­ed in Britain and now feared to be spread­ing to oth­er parts of Eu­rope.

But what is even more dis­turb­ing is that an in­ci­dent like this would still be hap­pen­ing in the man­ner it is be­ing re­port­ed with­in ma­jor op­er­a­tions like Peren­co’s.

This is be­cause the thresh­old for meet­ing pan­dem­ic safe­ty re­quire­ments with­in the oil and gas sec­tor is even high­er than nor­mal due to the fact that the work­ers op­er­ate in close prox­im­i­ty to each oth­er and al­so live in close quar­ters for much of their tours of du­ties on plat­forms. Things like en­sur­ing test­ing and the quar­an­ti­ning of new shifts of work­ers be­fore they pick up du­ty, tem­per­a­ture checks, en­sur­ing that there is phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing with­in the work­ers’ liv­ing quar­ters and com­mon ar­eas and dai­ly test­ing of work­ers on the rigs are even more crit­i­cal than be­fore and have been man­dat­ed in new in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards to en­sure against the spread of the virus.

Peren­co went on record yes­ter­day as say­ing it ini­ti­at­ed its Emer­gency Re­sponse Pro­ce­dure once the ini­tial batch of work­ers test­ed pos­i­tive. How­ev­er, in a re­lease that did not di­vulge much, lit­tle else was said about how the virus made its way off­shore if the prop­er pro­to­cols were fol­lowed on­shore. The Min­istry of Health’s up­date on dai­ly cas­es al­so did not re­fer to the Peren­co in­ci­dent, as it did with oth­er su­per spread­er events pre­vi­ous­ly.

Peren­co is the first re­port­ed in­ci­dent of a ma­jor out­break on an off­shore fa­cil­i­ty here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Oth­er ma­jor lo­cal oil and gas com­pa­nies have so far avoid­ed such in­ci­dents. But if we are to keep this as the first and last, a thor­ough and trans­par­ent probe of what went wrong, mon­i­tored by health of­fi­cials, must en­sue and any gaps rec­ti­fied. Giv­en that Petrotrin and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny are al­so part­ners with Peren­co, we al­so hope John Pub­lic is kept in the loop about what re­al­ly tran­spired, if not from Peren­co, then from ei­ther En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan or Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.