A T&T na­tion­al who spent sev­er­al months wait­ing to re-en­ter the coun­try as bor­ders re­mained closed in the past sev­er­al months is plead­ing with health au­thor­i­ties to do bet­ter re­gard­ing the ser­vices and ameni­ties at state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties.

Ryan Lalchan, 47, of Mara­bel­la, had just as­sumed du­ty aboard a cruise ship in March when he ar­rived in Grena­da and every­where was locked down as the virus be­gan spread­ing across the Caribbean re­gion. T&T’s bor­ders were closed around the same time, mak­ing it vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble for Lalchan to re­turn home.

Ap­ply­ing for an ex­emp­tion to re-en­ter T&T in Au­gust, he went to Bar­ba­dos hop­ing to se­cure a flight home but was un­suc­cess­ful.

Form­ing friend­ships with oth­ers like him­self, Lalchan said they en­dured "a dif­fer­ent kind of hell" as they fought to sur­vive.

Ar­riv­ing in T&T on De­cem­ber 18, he said there were no so­cial dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols dur­ing lug­gage col­lec­tion and even while be­ing trans­port­ed to the UWI Debe Cam­pus where they were as­signed to sep­a­rate rooms.

In­di­cat­ing they were lucky to have been placed in a fa­cil­i­ty where the rooms were self-con­tained, Lalchan said, "This group I was in all bond­ed and we were help­ing each oth­er. The guys were help­ing the girls up the steps with their lug­gage and one girl ac­tu­al­ly fell down…not one mem­ber of the med­ical team asked her dur­ing her stay if she was okay."

He said some of the rooms had not been cleaned from pre­vi­ous use as the toi­lets and show­er stalls were dirty and there was hair on the floor and beds. "I have met­al in my leg and they made me walk up three flights of stairs. The el­e­va­tors were not work­ing and then we had to come back down for meals.

"The rooms did not have locks on the doors and many of us had valu­ables, elec­tron­ics, and mon­ey in our pos­ses­sion which we could not even se­cure when we had to go down for meals."

Lalchan said the group’s meals im­proved on­ly af­ter com­plain­ing.

Lalchan urged the au­thor­i­ties to adopt a more hu­mane ap­proach when deal­ing with repa­tri­at­ed cit­i­zens. He said a lit­tle un­der­stand­ing would go a long way in eas­ing the men­tal stress they en­dure be­fore re­unit­ing with their loved ones.

The group was sent home hours be­fore Christ­mas Day and will re­main in home iso­la­tion for sev­en days.

7 new COVID cas­es be­tween De­cem­ber 23-25

The Min­istry of Health an­nounced that be­tween De­cem­ber 23 to 25, sev­en new cas­es were record­ed. Of this num­ber, one is a repa­tri­at­ed cit­i­zen. There were no ad­di­tion­al deaths, so the fig­ure re­mained at 125. A to­tal of 25 pa­tients re­main hos­pi­talised, while 41 are in step-down fa­cil­i­ties, with 174 at state quar­an­tine sites, and 361 peo­ple in home iso­la­tion. To­tal ac­tive pos­i­tive cas­es were said to be 434 on Sat­ur­day.