Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says the repa­tri­a­tion of T&T na­tion­als strand­ed abroad will con­tin­ue but with a lot more cau­tion than be­fore now that the num­ber of ac­tive COVID-19 cas­es have sur­passed 1,000.

The to­tal num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es reached 1,252 yes­ter­day, with 1,059 be­ing ac­tive cas­es with the par­al­lel health sys­tem.

Not­ing that con­sul­ta­tion with the Min­istry of Health was now crit­i­cal go­ing for­ward, Young said, “Due to the re­cent in­creased num­bers of pos­i­tive COVID cas­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Min­istry of Health be­gan us­ing some of the fa­cil­i­ties that were pre­vi­ous­ly be­ing used for state quar­an­tine. This fac­tor, as well as the num­bers of per­sons be­ing cared for in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem, meant that we have had to be cau­tious with repa­tri­a­tion num­bers,” Young told Guardian Me­dia in a What­sApp re­sponse to queries.

How­ev­er, he in­di­cat­ed that sev­er­al cit­i­zens who had re­ceived ex­emp­tions pre­vi­ous­ly are ex­pect­ed to re­turn this week­end.

“We have been work­ing with CAL to man­age a repa­tri­a­tion flight this Sat­ur­day of over 100 na­tion­als from the USA and on Sun­day there will be a num­ber of na­tion­als re­turn­ing from the UK and Eu­rope,” Young said.

Young said they have al­so dis­cussed adding fur­ther quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties with the Min­istry of Health.

The min­is­ter has the sole pow­er to grant ex­emp­tions for na­tion­als seek­ing to re­turn to the coun­try fol­low­ing the bor­der clo­sure since the first phase of the pan­dem­ic in March. The process is a bal­anc­ing act, where the num­ber of spaces avail­able with­in the par­al­lel sys­tem is tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion since all re­turn­ing na­tion­als are sub­ject to a manda­to­ry 14-day quar­an­tine pe­ri­od in ei­ther a state-run or state-su­per­vised fa­cil­i­ty.