The Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port has been closed to vis­i­tors af­ter a Venezue­lan mi­grant be­ing housed there test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

The de­vel­op­ment means that all per­sons who in­ter­act­ed with and vis­it­ed the mi­grant and Venezue­lans held at the fa­cil­i­ty will now have to be test­ed and take the nec­es­sary steps in ac­cor­dance with ac­cept­ed health pro­to­cols.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the T&T De­fence Force said on Sun­day (No­vem­ber 29), a group of Venezue­lan mi­grants were caught il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing the coun­try, de­tained and tak­en to the He­li­port base.

It said all mi­grants were test­ed for the virus and when the re­sults came in, one test­ed pos­i­tive. The De­fence Force said the in­di­vid­ual, whose gen­der and age was with­held, was iso­lat­ed in the in­fir­mary.

It ex­plained that in keep­ing with COVID pro­to­cols, every­one who was a pri­ma­ry con­tact of the mi­grant must now be con­sid­ered as COVID-pos­i­tive and will be quar­an­tined for 14 days.

The De­fence Force did not elab­o­rate on if sol­diers and mil­i­tary per­son­nel were al­so part of the pri­ma­ry con­tacts. It added that any­one who vis­it­ed the He­li­port to see the mi­grants may al­so be at risk and should con­sid­er them­selves pri­ma­ry con­tacts and take the nec­es­sary steps to get test­ed.

The He­li­port will now be closed to vis­i­tors and those wish­ing to see the mi­grants be­cause of the COVID-19 pos­i­tive case.