Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

The news of two con­firmed cas­es of the COVID-19 Omi­cron vari­ant among the group of Caribbean Air­lines pas­sen­gers that overnight­ed in Puer­to Ri­co last week due to a med­ical emer­gency, has raised anx­i­ety among some pas­sen­gers.

Sev­er­al trav­ellers from the group, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, told Guardian Me­dia they are now wor­ried that oth­ers may have been in­fect­ed with the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble vari­ant of con­cern.

On Sat­ur­day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, con­firmed that one of the 16 pas­sen­gers, who had to be quar­an­tined and retest­ed on ar­rival in­to the coun­try, is Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sec­ond “known” case of the Omi­cron vari­ant. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the pa­tient is in quar­an­tine and has mild flu-like symp­toms.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health re­vealed that an­oth­er pas­sen­ger from the group test­ed pos­i­tive for the vari­ant. In to­tal the coun­try now has five cas­es of the Omi­cron vari­ant, in­clud­ing one per­son with­out any his­to­ry of trav­el.

The pas­sen­gers told Guardian Me­dia they have not been con­tact­ed by the Min­istry of Health. How­ev­er, some say they are tak­ing mat­ters in­to their own hands by get­ting poly­merase chain re­ac­tion (PCR) tests dur­ing this week as well as, they will be self-iso­lat­ing out of pre­cau­tion.

“When I got back in­to the coun­try, my body was run­down af­ter not go­ing for about 50 hours so I got a lit­tle flu and I’ve been self-med­icat­ing and quar­an­ti­ning. Just out of pre­cau­tion and be able to go back out to work I got a PCR on Fri­day and thank­ful­ly, it came back neg­a­tive so I’m glad for that,” one pas­sen­ger told Guardian Me­dia.

He ad­mit­ted to be­ing “para­noid” since he in­ter­act­ed with the pa­tient while they were at the air­port in Puer­to Ri­co. At the time he said the per­son was not ex­hibit­ing any symp­toms.

“The worse thing I could do is be pos­i­tive and not know than be neg­a­tive and know that every­thing is al­right,” ac­cord­ing to him.

Flight BW483 di­vert­ed to Puer­to Ri­co last Mon­day evening fol­low­ing a med­ical emer­gency. The 146 pas­sen­gers on board had to overnight in Puer­to Ri­co and on­ly re­turned to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port around 2:20 am on Wednes­day. From the group, 16 peo­ple were re­quired to re­do their PCR tests since the 72-hour win­dow for the sub­mis­sion of a neg­a­tive PCR test re­sult had lapsed.

The group was tak­en to Re­gent Star ho­tel where they were quar­an­tined pend­ing the re­sults of their PCR tests.

“It’s even more wor­ri­some be­cause I came back home think­ing every­thing was fi­nal­ly al­right and now this,” an­oth­er pas­sen­ger said.

“This is fright­en­ing but I am vac­ci­nat­ed so I am try­ing not to wor­ry,” ac­cord­ing to an­oth­er pas­sen­ger.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh to find out whether health of­fi­cials have been reach­ing out to the pas­sen­gers. How­ev­er, up to press time, there were no re­spons­es to our ques­tions.