Dai­ly life for Ba­lan­dra’s newest res­i­dents ap­peared to be qui­et and unas­sum­ing on Thurs­day morn­ing.

Forced in­to a 14-day quar­an­tine pe­ri­od when they re­turned home on Wednes­day, the 68 T&T na­tion­als re­mained iso­lat­ed from their rel­a­tives and friends.

The sit­u­a­tion was nec­es­sary af­ter some of the pas­sen­gers they were on board with on the Cos­ta Faval­osa cruise ship test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 af­ter the ves­sel was not al­lowed en­try to Mar­tinique af­ter leav­ing Guade­loupe due to fears the virus could spread in that coun­try.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Church Camp - Camp Ba­lan­dra, around 11 am Thurs­day, some peo­ple were seen sit­ting on the front porch while a few oth­ers were do­ing laun­dry.

A few of the peo­ple at the fa­cil­i­ty were seen wear­ing masks over their faces as they chat­ted with each oth­er whilst en­joy­ing the sun on the porch. Var­i­ous ar­ti­cles of cloth­ing were draped across the con­crete ta­bles and bench­es dot­ting the front lawn of the com­pound.

Around the same time, two em­ploy­ees of Rick­el Ser­vices Ltd were seen re­mov­ing two portable toi­lets which had been placed in the front yard of the spa­cious com­pound on Wednes­day. Asked why the toi­lets were be­ing re­moved af­ter­wards, of­fi­cials said they had been de­liv­ered to the wrong ad­dress.

Up to Thurs­day, armed sol­diers re­mained sta­tioned out­side the fa­cil­i­ty to en­sure no one en­tered or left, as the com­pound will re­main locked down for the full 14-day pe­ri­od.

The 68 pas­sen­gers ar­rived at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port around mid­day on Wednes­day, were screened and test­ed and then tak­en to the re­mote com­mu­ni­ty. They set­tled in on Wednes­day night in the place that’s go­ing to be home for the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od. Some of the pas­sen­gers were seen milling about in the man­i­cured front yard talk­ing with each oth­er, while oth­ers were on their cell phones. A few oth­ers were seen wheel­ing in suit­cas­es from a batch stacked along the front porch.

At 7.07 pm, a de­liv­ery truck from the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (ER­HA) ex­it­ed the spa­cious com­pound af­ter drop­ping off sup­plies and meals. The dri­ver was dressed in full Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment (PPE).

Short­ly af­ter, the fa­cil­i­ty’s newest res­i­dents were seen in an or­der­ly line col­lect­ing the pack­ages be­ing hand­ed out.

Mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) are keep­ing watch over the com­pound to en­sure no one who is not sup­posed to be there comes or those in quar­an­tine go out. Po­lice were al­so seen pa­trolling the re­gion at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals.

The na­tion­als will al­so be mon­i­tored close­ly by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and pro­vid­ed with the re­quired ameni­ties dur­ing the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od.