Dr Os­afo Fras­er, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health for St George East has said that his of­fice co­or­di­nates the Free­dom Hall Quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine and they are cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing claims that pa­tients there are not be­ing served meals on time among oth­er prob­lems.

“Free­dom Hall has been op­er­at­ing as a quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty for quite some time with a very good track record of pro­vid­ing very good care and this is not us say­ing that, but the pa­tients say­ing that. So there may be some­thing go­ing on this morn­ing so we will try to find out what’s hap­pen­ing,” he said speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day.

A ques­tion was raised about ir­reg­u­lar times that meals are be­ing served at the cen­tre. Karl O’ Bri­an, who is cur­rent­ly in quar­an­tine at Free­dom Hall told CNC3 that the con­di­tions un­der quar­an­tine are not pa­tient-friend­ly.

He en­tered quar­an­tine on Jan­u­ary 14 and spoke about his ex­pe­ri­ences and chal­lenges for vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple.

“My ma­jor con­cern is about the el­der­ly folks and the young kids. A lot of them hav­ing en­tered the first night at mid­night com­ing from Pi­ar­co Air­port. Here we have to walk three to flight of stairs and the el­e­va­tor is not work­ing.”

He de­scribed the meals as be­ing “piss poor” and said they are be­ing served hours af­ter they are sup­posed to be served. This can have ad­verse ef­fects on pa­tiens with di­a­betes, he added.

“If break­fast is sup­posed to be served at 8 am, it is be­ing served at 10.45 am. I skipped lunch as a fam­i­ly mem­ber brought me lunch on Fri­day. I agree that this is not a restau­rant but at least serve some­thing that the peo­ple are com­fort­able with.”

He said if Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials care, they would send some­one to look at the sub­par con­di­tions of that spe­cif­ic quar­an­tine cen­tre.