Chester Sam­bra­no

Thir­teen Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) work­ers have been placed un­der self-quar­an­tine for 14 days af­ter work­ing on flights which were even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­ered to have trans­port­ed a coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Caribbean Air­lines said it was ad­vised that the pas­sen­ger trav­elled on March 7 on flight BW521 from the John F. Kennedy In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in New York to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in tran­sit (on the same day), even­tu­al­ly leav­ing T&T on board flight BW526 from Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al to the Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Guyana.

The woman, 52, sub­se­quent­ly test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 at a pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ty in Guyana and died on Wednes­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, CAL cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Dionne Ligoure said, “As soon as word was re­ceived yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) we im­me­di­ate­ly ac­ti­vat­ed all plans.”

Ligoure ex­plained that while CAL’s med­ical unit was in con­tact with the af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees, the pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties had been in con­trol of the quar­an­tine. How­ev­er, she added that the em­ploy­ees are “strict­ly ad­her­ing” to the reg­u­la­tions.

She said an em­ploy­ee hot­line has al­so been set up and CAL is ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor­ing what she de­scribed as an “evolv­ing is­sue.”

Ligoure stressed that, “good health and safe­ty of cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees is our high­est pri­or­i­ty.”

In this re­gard, cus­tomers who were on the said flights are now be­ing sought out by CAL and pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties.

“So both bod­ies are reach­ing out to the cus­tomers and to all per­sons who may pos­si­bly have been af­fect­ed,” Ligoure said.

How­ev­er, she main­tained that sec­ondary con­tact is not con­sid­ered re­al ex­po­sure.

As it re­lates to the ef­fect on flights, Ligoure said the air­line had ac­ti­vat­ed con­tin­gen­cies for any neg­a­tive im­pact.

“There have been some can­cel­la­tions on some of the routes af­fect­ed by COVID-19,” she said.

Ligoure said it would be “naive” not to an­tic­i­pate eco­nom­ic fall­out due to the pan­dem­ic.

In a me­dia re­lease, CAL al­so said air­craft are cleaned dai­ly at all ports in keep­ing with in­dus­try stan­dards. Fur­ther, in this in­stance, ad­di­tion­al sani­ti­sa­tion process­es were used as out­lined by the reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties.