Quarantine poses challenge for returning locals

(CNS): The need to quarantine individuals who are returning from overseas, given the high levels of COVID-19 infection in countries like the UK and the US, is posing challenges for Caymanians stuck overseas. But Premier Alden McLaughlin refuted allegations that government was prioritising expatriate workers over locals on Friday, when he set out some of the problems the government has faced as it tries to get people home safely.

Responding to some of the misinformation and exaggerated claims making the rounds on social media about government’s policy towards returners, as well as the complaints about the need to quarantine, the premier spoke at length at Friday’s press briefing about the position government is taking on quarantine and the shortage of rooms.

However, McLaughlin said that getting Caymanians home remained the priority for government.

Around 100 people returned on the British Airways flight this week, which departed Friday evening taking around 275 people to London. With 69 Caymanians returning home on that flight, they made up the majority of the incoming passengers.

There were also two permanent residents as well as civil servants and a team to work on the airport project, who will all be quarantined at government’s expense.

There were also 19 work permit holders on board, McLaughlin said, but in accordance with government policy they will all be required to pay for their own stay in quarantine.

The quarantine situation has become more challenging, McLaughlin acknowledged, not just because of the increasing number of people requiring quarantine but because many of the hotels that had previously offered rooms to government at cost are now refurbishing their facilities in preparation for staycations this summer once they are allowed.

McLaughlin said it has access to three facilities, or 246 rooms. These are the Holiday Inn and the Wyndham, which government is paying for, and Palm Heights, which is available at cost. However, he said that government is trying to secure another hotel.

The premier said government was aware that there are 110 Caymanians and more then 50 residents in the US who have registered to come home. He explained that in future, border control was handing repatriation flights from the US and managing the quarantine. With just one point to handle all flights in and out, he said he hoped things would get easier.

Explaining why government is still requiring people to be in mandatory official quarantine, he said that with the levels of infection in the United States and the United Kingdom, it was too risky to allow people to self-isolate because government did not have the resources to monitor the number of people returning.

“No one knows what the impact of the introduction of another strain of the virus will have on infection rates or how sick it may make people who become infected. So for the time being we are going to insist people isolate in a government facility for 14 days,” he said.

McLaughlin dismissed the idea of using electronic monitoring as it requires infrastructure that Cayman does not have and it would take time and money to do it.

Danielle Coleman, the director of Hazard Management Cayman Islands, explained that a lot of research and analysis had gone into assessing the best way for Cayman to manage this risk of people returning who could be infected.

Public health has largely been able to monitor the smaller numbers of patients testing positive who were already here for the period of their isolation but the number of those returning is much higher.

Coleman said that at this point, the government mandated quarantine facilities remained the most appropriate and safest option to deal with people returning from overseas.

McLaughlin stressed that if there was a better option, government would be using it, as it is both challenging and expensive to run the current quarantine system, but government has not yet found a more satisfactory way of cutting the very real risk of introducing a more virulent strain of the virus and undermining the massive effort and sacrifice here to contain it and keep people safe.

See the full COVID-19 briefing on CIGTV below:

---