Patients in State quarantine will not be allowed, under any conditions, to leave the facilities before their 14 day window is up. 

At Wednesday’s virtual media conference, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said the stringent measures were in place to omit any chance of exposing the threat of the virus to the community. 

Referencing a recent case in New Zealand, in which 320 community spread cases were recorded after two patients were allowed to leave quarantine for a short period, given their parent was ill, Minister Deyalsingh said Trinidad and Tobago could learn lessons from the mistakes made by other nations.

“We get those requests all the time here. That is what we’re trying to avoid. So all the requests to allow people to leave before 14 days to visit a dying relative, we understand, this is difficult, no one asked for this but we have this situation to manage.”

Presently, there are 560 patients at quarantine facilities across the country.