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Flex:
Maharaj on travel ban: Don't leave citizens stranded in China
By JULIEN NEAVES (NEWSDAY)

GOVERNMENT must provide assistance to any citizens who travelled to China and are affected by the new coronavirus two-week travel restriction, said former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj.

He was responding to a restriction announced by Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh at the post-Cabinet media briefing on Thursday as part of measures to interrupt transmission of the respiratory virus which the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared an international emergency. On Friday it was reported that the US is placing any citizen who has been in China's Hubei province (where the recent outbreak originated) in up to 14 days mandatory quarantine.

Maharaj told Newsday Government has a duty to help citizens abroad and if they have to be in another country assistance should be provided through the High Commissioner's Office. He also said such assistance should be announced, especially for those in China and those areas around China.

"You cannot leave citizens at the mercy of a foreign country through no fault of theirs stranded with no help. To impose a 14-day wait and provide no assistance I think that is not right. I think Government has a duty to assist citizens in that situation."

Asked whether the restriction itself breached any human rights Maharaj said a country needs to take whatever steps it thinks necessary having regard to its resources to prevent a disease or an infection of any communicable disease from spreading.

"It cannot be doubted that we do not have resources like China, America or England and therefore Government has to deal with it in a way that you may have inconvenience for some of the citizens. If you do not have the required quarantine facilities you could expose the population to dangers of health or even death."

On Deyalsingh's statements that T&T is prepared to deal with the possibility of multiple cases Maharaj compared the response to the crisis in China where they have resources to build a new hospital in a day and a lot of medicine and staff.

"We do not have that kind of resources and facilities at this time."

He said that if the minister wants the population to be happy, he should enumerate and state publicly what are the facilities to address the coronavirus and the quantity of medicine and staff.

"We have no such information."

He said events like these made it imperative for governments of small countries to take appropriate steps to ensure they have resources and availability of required skill to deal with future situations or "the entire population or a substantial part could be affected."

T&T national and teacher Shilohna Phillanders in China has complained about the lack of communication from the T&T embassy in China.

Former senator Gerald Ramdeen also commented on the travel restrictions and said while the restriction of someone's liberty should be a matter of concern the safety and security of the health of citizens trumps any other interest. He added, however, that there should be specifics on the travel restriction and other measures instead of broad brush statements.

"From the reactionary way Government dealt with the crisis it is clear what is happening is unplanned and not properly thought out. And that will only lead to disaster because we are dealing with the health and well-being of the country."

He referenced the comments by Public Services Association president Watson Duke who called for proper gear and equipment to ensure the safety and health of immigration and customers workers and said the response by Deyalsingh and National Security Minister Stuart "left a lot to be desired." He said that neither answered the critical question that the equipment being supplied were ordinary masks and cannot be intended to protect those working on the borders and at the doorstep of a global crisis.

Ramdeen also said the ministers did not report whether the workers had received the requisite training.

"There are no details on what the Government is doing."

On Government not following recommendations of the Pan American Health Organisation and the WHO Ramdeen said that every citizen has to be concerned.

"We had Ebola and Sars before and you would have thought we learned from those experiences to take the necessary precautions. Are we as country ready if one case (of the coronavirus) is detected?"

He said that in Seoul, South Korea, infected people would be put in an institution and stay for 14 days.

"We are doing nothing close to what WHO said we should be doing and that leaves lot to be desired. I hope whatever is being done we take guidance from international organisations and health and safety remains a priority."

Attorney Gregory Delzin said the travel restrictions were in the interest of the society's welfare.

"Human rights is not an absolute right. If it is for the good of the society and the restrictions are necessary it may be an understandable restriction on the freedom of movement."

The total coronavirus deaths in Hubei has reached 249 and more than 9,709 cases have been confirmed in mainland China as well as a handful of cases in the US, England, Russia and Thailand.

Newsday sought clarification from Deyalsingh on the travel restriction on what would happen to a citizen unable to remain in China or another country and whether they would be allowed to enter T&T and quarantined he replied in a WhatsApp message "No sir. I was clear." He was also asked where the individual would be stopped but he did not respond up to news time. An attempt to get clarification from Young was also unsuccessful.

Flex:
Court hearing involving Chinese citizen adjourned over coronavirus concerns
By Derek Achong (Guardian).

A High Court Judge was this morn­ing forced to ad­journ the hear­ing of a cor­rup­tion case in­volv­ing a 47-year-old Chi­nese woman, who was al­lowed to re­turn Trinidad on Sat­ur­day, be­fore this coun­try's 14-day trav­el re­stric­tions over the on­go­ing glob­al coro­n­avirus out­break, took ef­fect.

Yan Fang Hong was sched­uled to ap­pear be­fore High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day morn­ing for the con­tin­u­a­tion of her case for at­tempt­ing to bribe a po­lice of­fi­cer in 2007.

How­ev­er, when the case was called, St Clair-Dou­glas in­formed the court that be­cause of in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports on the coro­n­avirus he had in­struct­ed the Supreme Court Reg­is­trar to ask Hong's at­tor­neys for her not to at­tend.

St Clair-Dou­glas then ad­journed the case to March 2.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Hong, who has been on bail since be­ing charged over a decade ago, was grant­ed per­mis­sion to re­turn to Chi­na to spend Christ­mas with her chil­dren.

Be­fore Hong left Chi­na, last Thurs­day, her lo­cal at­tor­neys led by Ra­jiv Per­sad con­tact­ed the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion to find out whether she would be per­mit­ted to en­ter the coun­try.

At the time, the im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials al­leged­ly claimed that they had not re­ceived any of­fi­cial di­rec­tive on the trav­el re­stric­tions, which were an­nounced by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh at the post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing, last Thurs­day.

Hong ar­rived at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on a Caribbean Air­lines flight from New York, around 9 pm on Sat­ur­day night.

Sources said that she was ini­tial­ly screened and cleared at the John F Kennedy (JFK) In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in New York be­fore be­ing al­lowed to board a con­nect­ing flight to Trinidad.

When the woman re­port­ed­ly ar­rived in Trinidad, she was screened once again and did not show any symp­toms. She was then al­lowed to leave with one of her at­tor­neys, who came to the air­port to ob­tain doc­u­ments, which would have been nec­es­sary if she (Hong) was de­nied en­try and missed her sched­uled court ap­pear­ance be­fore St Clair-Dou­glas.

Hong is fac­ing a charge un­der the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act for brib­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer on April 5, 2007.

Hong was at a casi­no in Princes Town, which she man­aged, when po­lice raid­ed the busi­ness for hav­ing 40 more gam­bling ma­chines than per­mit­ted in its li­cence.

She al­leged­ly of­fered a se­nior of­fi­cer a $10,000 to for­go pros­e­cut­ing the of­fence but was in­stead ar­rest­ed and charged for cor­rup­tion.

The max­i­mum penal­ty for the of­fence is a $500,000 fine and 10 years in prison.

Ac­cord­ing to a World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) sit­u­a­tion re­port pub­lished on Tues­day, there are 20,630 con­firmed cas­es glob­al­ly.

Of the cas­es, 20,471 were con­firmed in Chi­na with 2,788 se­ri­ous cas­es and 425 deaths.

There have been 159 con­firmed cas­es in 23 oth­er coun­tries with one re­sult­ing in death.

asylumseeker:
2007 events, 2020 case in court.  Impressive.

Flex:
Female passenger refused entry on travel restriction
T&T Guardian Reports.

A fe­male pas­sen­ger who ar­rived at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port from Guyana on Mon­day night on a jour­ney that orig­i­nat­ed in Hong Kong was sent back to the port of em­barka­tion.

This was con­firmed by Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram who said the woman “did not have any symp­toms or any­thing that was sus­pi­cious but she was re­turned be­cause of the trav­el re­stric­tions from Chi­na.”

He told Guardian Me­dia: “I be­lieve she would have gone through oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing Hong Kong, New York and Guyana and then to Trinidad. Based on our trav­el re­stric­tions for per­sons leav­ing Chi­na with­in 14 days of de­par­ture, she was re­turned to the last port of call based on the Cab­i­net note and the im­mi­gra­tion laws.

“I don’t know what flight she came in from but I on­ly know of that woman who came in from Guyana and she would have spent some time at our air­port wait­ing on de­par­ture back to the port of call.”

Com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dent dur­ing an in­ter­view of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Char­maine Gand­hi-An­drews said of­fi­cials at this coun­try’s ports of en­try are alert­ed right away—via ad­vance pas­sen­ger in­for­ma­tion from air­lines—when pas­sen­gers orig­i­nate from Chi­na.

How­ev­er, some per­sons have more com­pli­cat­ed trav­el itin­er­aries and im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials are on­ly able to de­duce their ori­gin dur­ing the in­ter­view and by look­ing at all their trav­el doc­u­ments and pass­ports. “We had one such case yes­ter­day and that pas­sen­ger was re­turned to their port of en­try,” she said.

“They were screened by port health; there was no is­sue. How­ev­er, be­cause of the trav­el ban, that per­son was re­turned to their port of em­barka­tion.”

Ghan­di-An­drews said cit­i­zens and per­ma­nent res­i­dents of this coun­try can­not be re­fused en­try. How­ev­er, they will be screened and pos­si­bly even quar­an­tined if they have re­turned from a coun­try of in­ter­est for the virus, and pose a po­ten­tial in­fec­tion risk.

The in­ci­dent caused some con­cern among air­port work­ers, in­clud­ing Im­mi­gra­tion and cus­toms of­fi­cers, who are call­ing for more strin­gent screen­ing process­es, in­clud­ing full-body sani­ti­sa­tion spray­ing for all ar­riv­ing pas­sen­gers as they dis­em­bark from the re­spec­tive air­craft.

One air­port work­er, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said: “We think that there should be more pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures at the air­port... maybe have a sys­tem where all pas­sen­gers are screened and sani­tised by full-body spray­ing be­fore they en­ter the ter­mi­nal. The avail­abil­i­ty of more gloves, face masks and hand sani­tis­ers too.”

Ghan­di-An­drews said 1,000 masks were or­dered last week and it is be­com­ing “more im­per­a­tive that all of­fi­cers utilise it.”

With re­gards to the screen­ing process, she said an as­sis­tant chief and two Grade IV of­fi­cers have been as­signed to the air­port to over­see the coro­n­avirus screen­ing process. Dr Vish­wanath Par­taps­ingh, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer at the Health Min­istry, said risk of the nov­el coro­n­avirus nCoV-2019 spread­ing to T&T is rel­a­tive­ly low, com­pared with oth­er places. How­ev­er, while there is no need to pan­ic, the coun­try can­not af­ford to be com­pla­cent. Dr Par­taps­ingh says the screen­ing sys­tems are ex­treme­ly de­tailed to de­ter­mine trav­ellers’ pos­si­ble ex­po­sure to nCov-2019, once they are com­ing from coun­tries of in­ter­est.

“When you look at the ex­it screen­ing of those com­ing out of these ports, it is quite in­tense. There is a tem­per­a­ture scan­ning. There is al­so the ex­po­sure his­to­ry as­cer­tained: ‘Did you trav­el or go to a mar­ket with live an­i­mals? Did you have any live an­i­mals? Did you come in­to con­tact with any­one who dis­played any of the symp­toms?’ That is the base of the screen­ing,” he said.

“When you look at the cas­es in the oth­er coun­tries out­side of main­land Chi­na, the cas­es all had a di­rect ex­po­sure his­to­ry—ei­ther trav­el to or had a di­rect, close con­tact with some­one who was con­firmed with a case.”

Dr Par­taps­ingh said re­duc­ing risk ul­ti­mate­ly comes down to each per­son prac­tis­ing good hy­giene at all times, es­pe­cial­ly when cough­ing and sneez­ing, and most im­por­tant­ly—fre­quent­ly wash­ing one’s hands with soap and wa­ter.

He al­so warned about cross con­t­a­m­i­na­tion for those us­ing masks and gloves to pro­tect them­selves from pos­si­ble in­fec­tion.

“You have a mask on; you think all is well. You have gloves on; you think all is well. But then you’re on the phone. You have the pen. You touch the pass­port. You ad­just the mask. And so, you have the po­ten­tial to cross con­t­a­m­i­nate for any virus or any sort of pathogen that comes in.

“Hand wash­ing is key. Main­tain­ing a dis­tance with some­one who you know is sneez­ing and cough­ing is key.”

Last Thurs­day, Cab­i­net agreed to a trav­el re­stric­tion on any­one trav­el­ling from Chi­na to T&T, in light of the spread of the coro­n­avirus. Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­in­gh an­nounced that “per­sons who are present­ly liv­ing in Chi­na or vis­it­ing Chi­na, re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty, will not be al­lowed en­try in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go for 14 days af­ter leav­ing Chi­na.”

Flex:
Travellers from China arrive after ban announced
By Rishard Khan (Guardian).

Days af­ter the trav­el re­stric­tion was an­nounced by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, sev­er­al trav­ellers who re­cent­ly trav­elled to Chi­na were let in­to the coun­try.

The rev­e­la­tion came on the heels of a Chi­nese na­tion­al’s case hav­ing to be ad­journed by High Court judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day morn­ing, due to con­cerns over the coro­n­avirus.

Yan Fang Hong, 47, who was due to ap­pear in court yes­ter­day, left Chi­na on Thurs­day and en­tered the coun­try through a con­nect­ing flight in New York on Feb­ru­ary 1. (See ar­ti­cle be­low)

Asked how Hong could en­ter the coun­try af­ter the ban was an­nounced on Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 30, Deyals­ingh said: “The Pres­i­dent had to sign off on that or­der which she did on the 31st. The Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) has to sign off an or­der and that was done on the 31st. Im­mi­gra­tion has to be alert­ed. So al­though Cab­i­net took the de­ci­sion on Thurs­day 30, it would take some time to the pol­i­cy to reach down on the ground to Im­mi­gra­tion.”

Deyals­ingh was un­able to in­di­cate when the or­der reached Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials and said he would need to find out from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi. Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Char­maine Gand­hi-An­drews, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young and AG Faris Al-Rawi to as­cer­tain when the or­der was of­fi­cial­ly im­ple­ment­ed. How­ev­er, no re­sponse was giv­en up to press time.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram al­so re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia that “we would have had a cou­ple peo­ple com­ing through.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the de­lay in im­ple­ment­ing the re­stric­tion, he al­so of­fered a dif­fer­ent ex­pla­na­tion to Deyals­ingh’s, ex­plain­ing that a de­ci­sion was made to al­low in­to the coun­try, those trav­ellers who were al­ready en route to T&T when the re­stric­tion was an­nounced.

“It was ac­tu­al­ly on­ly now in ef­fect and what we had agreed is that peo­ple who were com­ing in that kind of grey area who had al­ready left their coun­tries of ori­gin. It’s un­fair for us as a coun­try to do a ban to­day and then peo­ple who are en route to turn them away be­cause they would not have known.”

“What we were do­ing is fol­low­ing them up for the 14 days to make sure they passed the in­cu­ba­tion pe­ri­od. And once they passed that pe­ri­od and have no symp­toms then fine. But if they have symp­toms at any point—we mon­i­tor them every day—and they have num­bers to call in the event that some­thing hap­pens at night and we would take them in­to hos­pi­tal and do the nec­es­sary test­ing.”

He said those trav­ellers are al­so equipped with the nec­es­sary equip­ment such as face masks and have a li­ai­son through the coun­ty med­ical of­fi­cer.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh in­di­cat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly say­ing in cas­es such as Hong’s, “they would be put in iso­la­tion just as we did with the stu­dent who came in.”

When con­tact­ed, Caribbean Air­lines com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ag­er Dionne Ligoure told Guardian Me­dia: “Caribbean Air­lines is acute­ly aware of the coro­n­avirus and the air­line is proac­tive­ly en­sur­ing that mea­sures are in place to safe­guard its cus­tomers and crews.”

Dr Paras­ram it­er­at­ed that cur­rent­ly there aren’t any con­firmed or sus­pect­ed cas­es of the nov­el coro­n­avirus in the coun­try.

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