Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is writ­ing to the Bar­ba­di­an au­thor­i­ties seek­ing to have the group of T&T na­tion­als un­der manda­to­ry quar­an­tine there test­ed for COVID-19 when they com­plete their 14- day quar­an­tine.

The T&T Gov­ern­ment is send­ing test kits to do this, he added.

“If they don’t have the virus, they’ll have to make arrange­ment — which I’ll con­sid­er — for them to re­turn (home). Med­ical ex­perts will ad­vise if they’ll have to be put in­to state quar­an­tine if they en­ter T&T.”

He said he’d al­so con­tact­ed Suri­namese au­thor­i­ties on T&T na­tion­als there to see if those peo­ple can al­so be med­ical­ly ex­am­ined.

“I’m wait­ing to see if Suri­name can as­sist in help­ing with ex­am­i­na­tion. We take it from there, this is a pri­or­i­ty,” he said.

Young said Gov­ern­ment was con­tact­ed Wednes­day on an emer­gency life-or-death sit­u­a­tion in Cari­com and could do very lit­tle to help im­me­di­ate­ly be­cause the coun­try’s bor­ders were closed. He said luck­i­ly the per­son be­gan re­cov­er­ing. He added that Ja­maica - where the ma­jor­i­ty of T&T’s UWI stu­dents are - ad­vised stu­dents to stay in place.

“It’s the best ad­vice. T&T na­tion­als across the world who ap­ply to en­ter will be looked at but any­one trav­el­ling, in­clud­ing in an air­plane, is putting them­selves at risk,” he said.

Young said the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion is al­so cur­rent­ly up­grad­ing sys­tems for fa­cial recog­ni­tion and bio­met­ric sys­tems. He’s al­so asked Im­mi­gra­tion to do a new al­pha­be­tised pass­port re­new­al sys­tem.