Good news for Trinidad and To­ba­go's na­tion­als strand­ed on cruise lin­ers beg­ging to come home.

Yes­ter­day, in an about-turn, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young an­nounced a de­ci­sion to al­low T&T sea­far­ers to re­turn home be­fore the bor­ders are of­fi­cial­ly re­opened.

The de­ci­sion came even as T&T was de­clared COVID-free - but with a warn­ing not to get com­pla­cent.

The fact is that all pa­tients who had test­ed pos­i­tive have been treat­ed and are now back home. No­body has test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 in more than a month and T&T’s death rate from the virus re­mains at eight.

That is in­deed good news. But it does not mean that all is well and cit­i­zens have been urged to re­main alert and do all that is re­quired to en­sure we stay that way.

There are thou­sands of T&T na­tion­als strand­ed across the globe, from In­dia to New York to Flori­da and up the is­lands of the Caribbean.

The re­open­ing of the bor­ders is ex­pect­ed to be the last phase of the re­open­ing process and un­der­stand­ably so. Af­ter all, it was be­cause of a num­ber of fac­tors, in­clud­ing lock­ing down our bor­ders so ear­ly in the game, that we are at the point that we are to­day.

There is no doubt that it is a dif­fi­cult time for cit­i­zens and their fam­i­lies un­cer­tain of when they will be al­lowed back home. The na­tion felt some of that when one crew mem­ber of the Dis­ney Fan­ta­sy, Nali­ni Dur­gah, ad­mit­ted that her heart broke when the ves­sel came 12 miles off T&T's north coast to re­fu­el yes­ter­day.

It was a case of so close and yet so far away. Look­ing yearn­ing­ly at the Trinidad land­mass as the ves­sel they were on was be­ing re­fu­elled, Dur­gah and 49 oth­er T&T na­tion­als strand­ed at sea since March had bit­ter­sweet feel­ings as they had not yet been giv­en the all-clear for en­try.

But in about-turn to an ear­li­er pol­i­cy hours lat­er, Min­is­ter Young an­nounced that the bor­ders will be opened to al­low those on cruise ships to re­turn home on a “reg­u­lat­ed and sched­uled ba­sis.”

It is un­der­stand­able that things have to be done in a reg­u­lat­ed and stream­lined way. And we hope that T&T na­tion­als strand­ed in var­i­ous parts of the world will be al­lowed to come home and soon.

Trinidad and To­ba­go, from all ac­counts, has not just flat­tened the curve but reached the point of no more con­firmed cas­es.

We hope, how­ev­er, that the test­ing will not stop. With­out it, we will nev­er know. COVID-19 has wreaked hav­oc on economies across the globe and even on our own econ­o­my where so many peo­ple are now un­em­ployed and which has put a heavy, ad­di­tion­al cost on the na­tion­al trea­sury. We thus al­so hope that the Min­istry of Health and health­care of­fi­cials will keep up the good work and main­tain their in­ten­si­ty in the fight to en­sure the virus is kept away.