SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Six of the 305 peo­ple who start­ed their 14-day quar­an­tine on Fri­day on board the En­chant­ment of the Seas cruise ship docked in T&T wa­ters have test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19.

The num­bers were con­firmed in the Min­istry of Health’s clin­i­cal up­date yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Ear­li­er in the day, the min­istry an­nounced that one per­son from the group had test­ed pos­i­tive.

At that time, the re­lease said that 308 tests were done on­board the ship but on­ly 153 re­sults had been re­leased.

That re­lease stat­ed that 155 test re­sults were pend­ing.

Those pend­ing re­sults were re­ceived yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, show­ing five more pos­i­tive cas­es.

Three hun­dred na­tion­als re­main on­board the ves­sel, con­tin­u­ing their quar­an­tine.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the six crew mem­bers were re­moved from the ves­sel by Coast Guard of­fi­cers and tak­en to the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment.

These pos­i­tive cas­es now bring the com­bined to­tal of cas­es to 123, with 3385 peo­ple hav­ing been test­ed. From the 123 pos­i­tive cas­es, 109 pa­tients have re­cov­ered and eight have died.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to one of the cruise ship crew mem­bers who are still on the ves­sel in quar­an­tine.

The crew mem­ber said the ves­sel has ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties to ac­com­mo­date the quar­an­tine.

“Each crew mem­ber is in his /her own room with ex­plic­it in­struc­tions that they are not to leave. Every­one un­der­stands what’s at stake here....and every­one is will­ing to com­ply so that we can get this be­hind us,” the crew mem­ber said.

She said the crew mem­bers are not new to the quar­an­tine process or so­cial dis­tanc­ing re­quire­ments as this has be­come the norm over the past two- and- a- half months.

Asked if there was fear among the re­main­ing group with the news of the six pos­i­tive cas­es, the crew mem­ber said, “I can’t re­al­ly an­swer this as there is pret­ty much no in­ter­ac­tion be­tween crew mem­bers so I can­not say with cer­tain­ty how oth­ers feel. How­ev­er, I would imag­ine that peo­ple are con­cerned for our col­leagues who have test­ed pos­i­tive, and hope that they re­ceive the med­ical care that they need to fa­cil­i­tate re­cov­ery.”

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last evening, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said while the new cas­es are wor­ry­ing, the par­al­lel health­care fa­cil­i­ties for treat­ment of COVID-pos­i­tive pa­tients are nowhere near ca­pac­i­ty.

On Sat­ur­day, at a press con­fer­ence, Deyals­ingh said the quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties were near­ing ca­pac­i­ty, which re­stricts how many na­tion­als will be al­lowed to re­turn home in the com­ing weeks.

Last night, he said the Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ed that when large groups were brought in, there would be pos­i­tive cas­es.

“That is why we kept Cau­ra and Cou­va emp­ty, know­ing that when you bring in huge num­bers of peo­ple, some will be pos­i­tive. And that is why as a Gov­ern­ment, we didn’t give in to emo­tion and just open the bor­der, this is clear proof that the mea­sures that we took were sol­id and work in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try,” Deyals­ingh said.

The ship docked on Fri­day af­ter weeks of dis­cus­sions be­tween its man­age­ment and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young to de­cide whether the 305 na­tion­als on board could be quar­an­tined on the ship as to not over­bur­den the coun­try’s quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties.

The ship is ex­pect­ed to re­main docked in T&T wa­ters for at least two weeks as the em­ploy­ees of Roy­al Caribbean cruis­es re­main on board for their manda­to­ry 14-day quar­an­tine be­fore be­ing al­lowed to re­turn home.

Nine­teen crew mem­bers from the Nor­we­gian Cruise Lines are due to ar­rive in the coun­try to­day and an­oth­er sev­en crew mem­bers from Dis­ney Cruis­es will ar­rive to­mor­row.

Stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Cave Hill Cam­pus are al­so ex­pect­ed to re­turn home to­day.

On Sat­ur­day, 140 stu­dents from the UWI Mona Cam­pus in Ja­maica re­turned home.

That group is be­ing quar­an­tined at the Cana­da Hall at the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.