RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

The 295 re­turn­ing na­tion­als aboard the Roy­al Caribbean’s En­chant­ment of the Seas will be swabbed to­day as the manda­to­ry COVID-19 quar­an­tine comes to an end on Sat­ur­day.

This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh dur­ing yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 press brief­ing.

The na­tion­als, who have spent months at sea, are ea­ger to re­turn home and Deyals­ingh said if all goes well they will be re­leased by the week­end.

“As you know, we were un­able to board the ship yes­ter­day or bring peo­ple out for the swab­bing. Right now, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer and (Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer, In­sti­tu­tions, Min­istry of Health) Dr Maryam Richards, who is in charge of the lo­gis­tics, are hav­ing dis­cus­sions with port of­fi­cials. If all goes well we will have a swab­bing op­er­a­tion. I am hop­ing that af­ter dis­cus­sions with port of­fi­cials, we will swab 295 peo­ple to­mor­row (to­day),” Deyals­ingh said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the ship will be al­lowed to come ashore and dock at the Cruise Ship Com­plex to al­low health work­ers to ac­cess the crew for the test­ing since the on­go­ing protest by port work­ers ham­pered their abil­i­ty to do so on Tues­day, the orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled day for the ac­tiv­i­ty.

Deyals­ingh said there were six pa­tients from the cruise ships at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, not­ing that one more pa­tient had to be trans­ferred to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies cam­pus for non-COVID re­lat­ed ill­ness.

“So at Cau­ra we have sev­en (cas­es) to­tal­ly iso­lat­ed from rest. At Cou­va, no one is there. At the Home of Foot­ball, no one. At UWI Pe­nal/ Debe cam­pus we had 50 per­sons and hope­ful­ly, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of them, once tests come back neg­a­tive, could be home by 29 June to Ju­ly 1 as­sum­ing all goes well,” Deyals­ingh said.

He gave a fur­ther break­down of those un­der state quar­an­tine.

Deyals­ingh al­so stressed that Gov­ern­ment was not mov­ing to make masks manda­to­ry, say­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has ad­vised us­ing moral sua­sion to get cit­i­zens to ad­here. He said every­one had a per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect them­selves and oth­ers.

He al­so said all food, gro­ceries, com­put­ers stores, car parts out­lets could stay open un­til 10 pm.

Re­spond­ing to a threat of mas­sive protests on Ju­ly 1 by the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Deyals­ingh said he pre­ferred not to com­ment as he planned on meet­ing with the body on Mon­day to en­gage in con­struc­tive ne­go­ti­a­tion and con­ver­sa­tions.

Mean­while, coun­selling psy­chol­o­gist Camille Camp­bell said par­ents must be­ware of fake news which can cre­ate pan­ic and fear among fam­i­lies. She said moth­ers in par­tic­u­lar should prac­tice self-care by man­ag­ing their stress lev­els.

For those whose chil­dren are sit­ting ex­am­i­na­tions, Camp­bell said it was im­por­tant to es­tab­lish a rou­tine for them and to al­ways set the ex­am­ple as it re­lates to so­cial dis­tanc­ing and hy­giene.

“We can dis­ci­pline our­selves from home, ob­serve so­cial dis­tanc­ing. I speak to par­ents prepar­ing for SEA, CSEC and CAPE. I can’t imag­ine what you’re go­ing through in this sea­son. Ex­ams are stress­ful and the added stress of COVID can cre­ate anx­i­ety. You are in an un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion. Be kind and pa­tient with your­self,” Camp­bell said.