RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The dra­mat­ic res­cue of 32 Venezue­lan na­tion­als from a sink­ing pirogue by Coast Guard of­fi­cers trig­gered a COVID-19 scare at the Ce­dros Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex yes­ter­day af­ter some of the Venezue­lans ap­peared to be sick.

For about 10 hours, the com­plex re­mained in lock­down and of­fi­cers were ad­vised not to leave or re­turn to their homes.

By 2.30 pm, how­ev­er, the lock­down was lift­ed. But law en­force­ment of­fi­cers con­tin­ued to ex­press fear for their health and safe­ty af­ter­wards.

A to­tal of 27 of­fi­cers from the com­plex, com­pris­ing of Coast Guard, Cus­toms, Im­mi­gra­tion and po­lice of­fi­cers, were ex­pect­ed to be test­ed but by late evening none of them was giv­en any tests.

A source said around 1 am, five of­fi­cers on board a Coast Guard in­ter­cep­tor spot­ted a pirogue in ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters off Ica­cos. The oc­cu­pants ap­peared to be in dan­ger as the boat was sink­ing.

The of­fi­cers man­aged to res­cue a to­tal of 32 Venezue­lans, in­clud­ing women and chil­dren, who were tak­en to the Coast Guard’s Ch­aguara­mas base. The Ce­dros of­fi­cers then re­turned to Ce­dros and in­ter­act­ed with over two dozen of­fi­cers from dif­fer­ent arms of law en­force­ment and sev­er­al MTS clean­ers.

News lat­er spread that the res­cued Venezue­lans were suf­fer­ing from flu-like symp­toms and an in­struc­tion was giv­en for of­fi­cers to re­main in lock­down. But around 2.30 pm, a source said they were ad­vised that the lock­down was lift­ed and they could go about their busi­ness as usu­al.

“This is very sus­pi­cious. They are say­ing they test­ed the Venezue­lans and they test­ed neg­a­tive so they raised the lock­down on us. We have been told that it takes 24 hours for re­sults to come in so how could they say that all the Venez test neg­a­tive for COVID-19?” a source added.

An­oth­er source said, “What if with­in the next sev­en days an­oth­er test is done on the Venezue­lans and they get pos­i­tives? What about us who al­ready in­ter­act­ed with so many peo­ple? In my opin­ion, the quar­an­tine should have been for 14 days?”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Pub­lic Af­fairs Of­fi­cer at the T&T Coast Guard, Lieu­tenant Khadi­ja Lamy, for a re­sponse but she said she would call back af­ter in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Guardian Me­dia al­so is­sued a ques­tion about the test­ing of the Venezue­lans and the law en­force­ment of­fi­cers dur­ing the Min­istry of Health press brief­ing on Wednes­day.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram con­firmed the in­ci­dent.

He said, “What I know is that there was an in­ter­cep­tion of 32 Venezue­lan na­tion­als, that is re­al­ly a mat­ter for the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. The health com­po­nent of it is re­al­ly to do an as­sess­ment of those in­di­vid­u­als to make sure they have no acute ill­ness­es while they are be­ing held in Trinidad.”

He added, “The of­fi­cers have been in con­tact and if some­one was deemed to have flu-like ill­ness in that group with mere ex­po­sure with­out prop­er PPE, they will have to be quar­an­tined, whether it is by the De­fence Force or with­in one of our fa­cil­i­ties over the next few days.”

He said this would be de­cid­ed lat­er on.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the is­sue, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young said it was re­port­ed that the TTCG in­ter­cept­ed a ves­sel at sea ear­ly Wednes­day and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 32 Venezue­lans were de­tained.

“In keep­ing with cur­rent health pro­to­cols, the in­di­vid­u­als in­volved were screened by pub­lic health of­fi­cials. This in­cludes both the Venezue­lans as well as some of the TTCG crew in­volved,” he said.

He not­ed that the pub­lic health screen­ing and as­sess­ments con­firmed none of the Venezue­lans had COVID-19 symp­toms.

“These Venezue­lans will be re­turned to Venezuela and those arrange­ments are be­ing made. Some of the TTCG crew in­volved will al­so be quar­an­tined as a pre­cau­tion and in keep­ing with pre­vi­ous­ly ap­proved pro­to­cols,” he added.

Young ex­pressed thanks to the TTDF, “in par­tic­u­lar those in the Coast Guard for con­tin­u­ing to work to se­cure our bor­ders.”