Rowley: Govt doing all to protect against Coronavirus

 (Trinidad Guardian) Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has giv­en the as­sur­ance that his Gov­ern­ment will do every­thing pos­si­ble to pro­tect T&T’s cit­i­zens from the dead­ly Coro­n­avirus.

The Coro­n­avirus was one of the is­sues that came up in the Prime Min­is­ter’s ques­tions yes­ter­day in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Op­po­si­tion mem­ber Lack­ram Bo­doe en­quired from Row­ley about the rapid spread of the Coro­n­avirus world­wide and whether the Gov­ern­ment has con­sid­ered the im­ple­men­ta­tion of trav­el re­stric­tions to T&T.

Row­ley said giv­en the fast sit­u­a­tion de­vel­op­ing in Asia and across the world, the Gov­ern­ment “is very alert and the Min­istry of Health is con­sid­er­ing and prepar­ing a note for the Cab­i­net on this mat­ter and the ap­pro­pri­ate de­ci­sion will be tak­en and at the ap­pro­pri­ate time and im­me­di­ate­ly the pop­u­la­tion will be in­formed.”

In a fol­low-up ques­tion, Bo­doe en­quired if there were any con­firmed cas­es of Coro­n­avirus in the coun­try, to which Row­ley replied “as far as the Gov­ern­ment is aware we are not in a po­si­tion to con­firm any such but the Min­is­ter of Health has point­ed out that the na­ture of the virus is such….that if you are not pre­sent­ing with a tem­per­a­ture to be iden­ti­fied…if you are asymp­to­matic… mean you do not show the symp­toms that is not a proof that you are not car­ry­ing the virus.”

Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment was “in no po­si­tion to con­firm that we have. And I think that is a good po­si­tion to be in at this time.”

Bo­doe asked Row­ley if he can give the as­sur­ance that ad­e­quate re­sources will be pro­vid­ed for the con­tain­ment of the virus and its treat­ment for cit­i­zens if we are se­vere­ly af­fect­ed.

The PM said Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has been con­stant­ly ad­dress­ing the pop­u­la­tion on this mat­ter.

He said the min­istry has been fol­low­ing the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion pro­to­cols one of which in­volved the screen­ing of for­eign­ers at the Pi­ar­co Air­port “to be ahead of the game. So we are proac­tive and we will be ex­treme­ly con­cerned and care­ful to do every­thing that is pos­si­ble to pro­tect the peo­ple of T&T.”