 A pleasant good morning everyone and welcome to the press conference on St. Lucia's national readiness to respond to COVID-19. I am Fenel Neptune, Information Officer in the Department of Health and Wellness. Today we have a panel which will provide great insight as to St. Lucia's position for preparedness and response for COVID-19. We have with us the Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sharon Belma-George, Chief Environmental Health Officer Pakal Ragnanan, Chief Education Officer Dr. Fiona Meyer, and also the Assistant Divisional Officer of the St. Lucia Fire Service, Jermaine William. Welcome everyone. First of all, we will have the Chief Medical Officer who will provide us with some information as it relates to St. Lucia's national preparedness for COVID-19. Thank you very much Ms. Neptune. Good morning to all. I will commence by giving an international and regional update on COVID-19. Based on the WHO coronavirus disease situation report as of March 10th, they've reported a total of 113,702 confirmed cases globally with 4,012 deaths. Outside of China, a total of 32,778 cases with 872 deaths. The total number of countries, 109 countries, are now affected. There have been five new territories that have increased. To give you an idea on a regional level, we have five cases in the Dominican Republic. French Guyana, five cases, Martinique, a total of three cases, St. Martin, two cases, St. Bartholomew I, and Jamaica as of yesterday, one confirmed case. The Caribbean Public Health Agency raised the alert for St. Lucia from low to moderate high around February 28th. As of March 5th, this was raised to very high in terms of the introduction of cases into the region. So this alert of very high again increases our level of alert and ensures that we increase our level of preparedness. So we thought it important to update the public on our in-country transmission plans. We have been working on a level of preparedness that is heightened surveillance for us to be able to first of all reduce the number of cases coming in, which we have done with our travel restrictions and our heightened surveillance at the ports and within our hotels and also through the intelligence that we receive with external agencies. We have also been working very closely to allow us to pick up in a very early phase, anyone who may fit the description of a suspect case. So this has been a lot of our focus. At this stage, I want to make it clear that we do not have any confirmed cases of COVID-19 in St. Lucia. However, it is important for the public to be aware of our in-country transmission plan and what will be expected once we get cases and we have in-country transmission. As we have indicated before with COVID-19, this is a new strain from the family of coronavirus. What we note is that about 81% of persons in countries that it has affected get the disease but in a very mild form, like a mild cough and cold with fever, coughing, sore throat. About 14% of persons get the severe disease and would require some level of hospitalization. About 5% get more severe, get intense disease critical and about two, between 2.1 and 2.9% of persons are those who pass away. Now those persons tend to be elderly persons and persons with comorbid conditions. So we, the Ministry of Health, we do not want anybody to get sick. We are not saying that anybody should die but it gives us an idea of our high-risk group and the group of persons that we need to work towards once we get cases. Reducing transmission to them and in an effort to protect them, we have been working on a number of levels to reduce this. And I'm so happy that we have the Ministry of Education here because they are one of the very important stakeholders in working with us in the reduction of transmission. Because how we manage the disease in the early phase when we have in-country transmission will determine the burden on the healthcare system because it will lead to the number of persons who get it on the time period and also the impact that it has on us. So I will start with our healthcare facilities for in-country transmission. When we have in-country transmission, we will be setting up five community clinics at the five ports, at the five areas, Grosjele, Dennery, Souffre, Castries and at the Viewport. Those clinics will be set up in those communities for persons who have any concern. We said 81% of persons develop this disease in a mild form. So most persons will be able to stay home and be okay. Most persons will not need medical attention. So our community clinics will serve as the points where persons with concern that they may have had the disease because we understand the level of fear and it is coming out of concern. We understand the level of fear that we note in the community and we are working to ensure that we provide persons with adequate information so they can assess the level of risk and adopt the correct behaviors to protect themselves and their families. So with all of this, our clinics will reassure the public that the clinics are there if you have any concerns that you, your child, your family member, these clinics will be the first point of contact where you will go to to get advice to get care. Within the hospital, we are presently at our isolation treatment center. Remember, we do not have any cases to date. So we have set up a 15-bed isolation unit within the hospital. Now these cases are for these beds are for persons who need hospital admission. This would be persons within the severe group and usually what we note from what is happening in the other countries, those are persons who tend to be older and tend to have other comorbid conditions such as diabetes, such as renal disease, liver disease, lung conditions. So we anticipate when we look at our disease profile for St. Lucia, we look at the ages at which we have persons with chronic disease. We anticipate the health system. We will need an increased admission of beds for patients to be admitted for care for COVID-19. So to facilitate this, we've been working closely with the Victoria Hospital, the St. Jude Hospital and the community in clinical teams to ensure that for now persons are aware of what to do, how to manage. A community and St. Jude will be providing support for management of patients as we note there will be a need for extra. We have also been compiling a list from, we've spoken to the Nursing Association, the Medical and Dental Association for support from private physicians, retired nurses, other persons to supplement the list to ensure we have a standby list, both for our community clinics and for support for the hospital for care. We are, like I said earlier, we anticipate that there will be a need for admissions within hospital care as we see in a lot of the other countries that the disease is in presently. The office of the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister has endorsed an accelerated move to the OKEU. This information will be communicated publicly through that office. So this will provide us with the opportunity for an expanded number of beds within the Victoria Hospital for Victoria to become our respiratory hospital. These details will be given officially to the public, but just to indicate that we do have a plan for expansion of beds for admissions when we get to that stage. Our budget has been approved so that we've been actively procuring equipment, extra medication, personal protective equipment. So as needed, we will be able to utilize. One of the gaps that I indicated, well remember this is a disease which started, which was identified in January. In our very early releases, one of the gaps that we indicated was our lack of diagnostic capacity. Initially, our regional lab that is the Caribbean Public Health Agency, they did not have the capacity to test for COVID-19. And about three weeks ago, they were able to develop this capacity. So it reduced the time for initially they were relying on the Centers of Disease Control for the region. And when they got capacity, it reduced the time from seven days to 24 to 48 hours for us to get results. The Ministry of Health with support of financing through the Ministry of Finance, we had quite steadily been working with the team from the Caribbean Public Health Agency to see how we could have our own diagnostic capacity in country. The equipment for diagnostic testing for COVID-19 came in yesterday. So we have received the equipment to facilitate testing. The agents will be coming in tomorrow Thursday and our laboratory staff will be undergoing testing next week for use of the machine and for testing for COVID-19. So we anticipate if all goes well that by the week of March 23rd, we should have the capacity for diagnostic testing. Here in St. Lucia. So that we are really hoping that everything flows as planned as I'm saying we're anticipating. So this diagnostic capacity should be here very soon. I would also like to take the opportunity to request a level of compassion and support for persons coming in and for persons with Asian descent. This is a small society. We know a lot of us know each other. We come from small communities. We continue to get reports of stigma and discrimination to persons of this descent. We even within our community service, we had to stop one of our very important collaborations with the Japanese. The level of disregard and stigma that they were getting within the community, it was very embarrassing. And for a group that has worked with us very closely, it was very inconsiderate what was happening at a level of the community. And we would also like to appeal to the public that a lot of damage is being done to us as a country. When a lot of those false reports commence and then we forward them to other persons as the truth. It is affecting us on a regional level and an international level as well. Sunday's incident which was completely fake, we had to spend a whole of Sunday discussing if our regional agencies that this was fake. There is no case and it also reduces the credibility of the country. We are an island that also depend on tourism and we anticipate there will be a level of economic impact when the disease comes. So let us not start before it comes. Let us try as much as possible and we need to see this. I think when persons see it on a personal level, it may affect them a little bit more. It is your uncles, your aunts, your parents, your sisters that work within different levels of society. And when this creates a level of doubt for the country, it affects everybody. So as much as possible we ask that a level of verification be found before we share information out to the public. Another example was yesterday's incident. Yes, we have a threat of coronavirus so our surveillance is on. However, we still need to manage all other incidents and every time a plane or a ship is stopped, it does not necessarily mean it's an infectious disease that we are managing. And yesterday was a classic example. And this is something we do I guess now because of the threat of COVID-19, everybody assumes that it's COVID-19 on board. We got the alert that there was a sick person. As per our regular protocol, in cases when there may be somebody sick on board, the Ministry of Health, we, to ensure that we reduce any level of transmission to any other agency, we ask for the plane to be grounded until we can confirm that it is safe for the passengers to go. So this was done as we do routinely. Our team did the review and it was a complication of a chronic disease. It was not an infectious disease. So the reports of COVID-19 on the flight were all false. And the level of which this information went out was really unfortunate. So we need to be careful and on persons take pictures. It went around. They will voice notes everybody without a capacity to diagnose within a very short period of time. They diagnose COVID-19 on the flight. And it's unfortunate because it causes even more concern and panic on the ground. So we need to develop a level of responsibility with the information that we put out. Our office, we've made ourselves available and we clarify and we send that. We try as much as possible to be timely. We may not be as timely as we prefer to be a little late with accurate information than to provide information that is not accurate very fast. So I do apologize sometimes when there are delays. But we need to ensure that the information that we give into the public is accurate. I think for now this is the most that I will discuss. Thank you very much, Dr. Belma. Right now we're going to have the Chief Environmental Health Officer, Mr. Pakaragnan. And of course we know that ports both A and C is another area which is critical in terms of our preparation, our response to COVID-19. So right now we'll have Mr. Rabnan. Good morning. The issue of port health surveillance have become of greater significance within the last two to three months for St. Lucia. As we're aware that travel and trade are very important for us as a country. We've seen worldwide that with the transmission of COVID-19, many countries have had their first case via somebody visiting an infected area and returning to that country with the disease, what we call an imported case. We in St. Lucia are trying our best to negate an imported case. However, we recognize that there is no 100% full proof system that you can have. I've heard a lot about completely closing our ports. And the question is, is it logistically, economically possible for this to happen? And really and truly it is not. That is why the WHO has advised countries to build capacity because we are dealing in a period where you can no longer restrict travel and trade indefinitely. It can be done for short periods of time but not indefinitely. Therefore, strengthening our ports of entry has become very important and we've conducted assessments of our points of entry. For extra budgetary allocation we've been able to increase our human resource capacity at the ports as well as obtaining specific pieces of equipment to allow us to screen and to be able to detect persons of concern to us. When we think of the ports, we work very closely with the airlines and the shipping agencies because we rely on information in order to make decisions. It is mandated by law and St. Lucia we have the quarantine act. It is an old piece of legislation but it is very relevant even today. The quarantine act makes it mandatory that every aircraft that comes into St. Lucia submit before anybody can deplane a document called the General Declaration of Health. And that document really should be signed by the pilot given an indication as to the health status of the aircraft including the passengers on board. It is mandatory that the flight attendants monitor persons to determine whether they have any disease conditions and that is done by observation, monitoring persons in terms of whether they are coughing excessively, how often do they visit the washroom and to sometimes ask little questions because these are all indicators as to whether something is happening to a passenger on board an aircraft. There are times where passengers would report that they are unwell and that would be noted and all that information would be compiled into one document and submitted to the health authorities in St. Lucia. Therefore, before anybody comes up the aircraft, the health authorities would have to vet this document and make an assessment as to whether it is okay to give clearance that persons come off the flight or whether everybody should remain on board until we can complete a medical assessment of the flight and then give practice to that aircraft. As what happened last night, this is the protocol that when there is a sick person on board you need to first establish what the sickness is because many times on the aircraft you do not have a doctor on board. Therefore, it is important for the health authorities to make that independent evaluation and assessment and to ensure that the situation is contained and can be managed and then clearance will be given. As far as our seaports are concerned, and that is where we get all the cruise lines and other sea crafts, a maritime declaration of health is the document that must be submitted by law. Now, we recognize that this was not happening across the board in that there were vessels, categories of vessels that were submitting the maritime declaration of health, but as of now it has become mandatory for every vessel, every ship whether it's a leisure craft, a cruise ship, or a cargo ship. Every single one of these vessels are now mandated to submit the maritime declaration of health. It's important, even more so for the larger vessels, the cruise vessels, because they have large numbers of people in a confined space. Also on these cruise vessels, we have medical doctors and their medical facilities, infirmaries on board, and the maritime declaration of health as required by law must be submitted to us within 24 hours of one of these ships getting into our country. It gives us a lead time to be able to make an assessment. And therefore we have been using that document along with other documents that are submitted including passenger list, important, crew list, also important, because as part of our Port Health Surveillance Program, travel history is very important for us. And this document would allow us to be able to get some of the travel history that we're talking about. We recognize with the aircrafts is a little different because a plane may take 8 hours, 4 hours, 3 hours, or 6 hours depending on where they're coming from to get into St. Lucia. It's very, very short periods. It's difficult to be able to get these documents in advance. However, we are working with our counterparts at immigration to getting advanced passenger information wherever possible. We have stepped up our surveillance in terms of questioning passengers of countries that they have visited there, screening their passports more carefully to try to pick up travel history because travel history for us is important. We say here today that we are not necessarily interested in just nationalities of restricted countries. That is important, but more important for us is travel history. So you may not be Italian, but if you have been to Italy within the last 14 days, you are of concern to us, of interest to us. So it's not about nationalities, not about Chinese or Italians or Iranians. It's about traveling to these countries no matter where you're from in the world. And travel history is what is important for us, and that is what we emphasize. So for the ships, the maritime declaration of health is very critical. And this is what allows us to make certain decisions in terms of whether we're going to allow the ships to come to St. Lucia, whether we're going to receive them and the conditions by which we are going to receive them. St. Lucia has been working very closely with the rest of the region in terms of a harmonized protocol for the ships especially, the cruise ship sector. Because we recognize that there seem to be different level of tolerance by each country. With a harmonized protocol, it would allow the countries within the region to basically have the same standards as to what we accept and don't accept. So there is a standard common message that is sent out to these vessels so they know what we are accepting and what we're not accepting. And therefore this regional protocol has been established and the final draft of it was submitted just this Friday. And very soon we're going to circulate it so that everyone would know what are the protocols by which we are going to receive ships and what is expected of a country as well as what is expected of the ship. So what they ought to do is very clear. What information they need to supply is very clear and how the country responds is very clear as well. So these are some of the things that we are doing. We have also had reason to strengthen our screening at the ports of entry. So as of Friday last week, Martinick which is a very close neighbor of ours where we have frequent movement of persons between St. Lucia and Martinick. Martinick recorded the first case or cases of COVID-19. Immediately we had to take additional screening measures at our ports. We recognize that some of the procedures that we are using may cause a little bit more delay but we are not living in a normal world. And therefore we need to do what is right in order to protect our nationals and visitors to St. Lucia. And therefore the additional screening measures, I know some persons may not be happy with it but we have to implement additional screening measures. So what it is that is happening in terms of Martinick at this point in time, the theories that are coming out of Martinick and other vessels. We have nurses now that are taking individual temperature reading for the persons that are coming up and that has been done individually. Therefore what has happened is that the vessels are now disembarking passengers row by row so that it would allow for the screening to take place. That is important for us, additional measures that we are taking in terms of ensuring that persons because between Martinick and St. Lucia is just about an hour, an hour and a half. But we need to understand that if somebody has a temperature reading that we can question them further, we can triage them and do the necessary and know how to deal with that matter. So that is additional screening measure that we have put in place. So as the situation escalates we may enhance what it is that we are doing at the ports of entry but we continue to rely on people's honesty. Because it has to do with people being truthful in the information that they provide. And we have seen many times that persons do not want to go in quarantine. I am coming back to St. Lucia and I want to be able to go home, I want to be able to go back to work, I want to go back to my business. And as a result they try to falsify information as to their travel history. That cannot work. It creates additional burden and pressures and delays at the ports because we need to get it right. And therefore we are appealing to persons who have traveled to restricted countries. If you are coming back to St. Lucia let us know that you are coming back. Because it is important to protect you and to protect us as a whole. The measures that are put in place is for the protection of all. And so we urge persons to be honest and truthful with the information that is given. And to ensure that we can deliver very efficaciously in what we are doing. Thank you. Thank you so much Mr. Ragnanen for that information. Another key stakeholder in the management of COVID-19 is the Ministry of Education. And we continue to work with them to ensure reduction of the virus in the schools. So we are pleased to have the Chief Education Officer Dr. Fiona Meyer with us today. Good morning everyone. Well thank you so very much for the opportunity to represent on behalf of the Ministry of Education. And we applaud the partnership with Ministry of Health because this is an issue that will impact all of us. So we are grateful for the opportunity. I just want to identify that we are here as a team. We have our health and safety officer as well as our deputy chief which speaks to the proactive manner in which we want to engage and we want to deal with the situation at hand. First off we want to really remind everyone the general public our school communities that the public announcements by the Ministry of Health are for all of us. And that when these are circulated and disseminated it is meant for us to take heed of them and also to put them into action. We are very pleased that we've had sensitization throughout our system and we continue to do so in terms of parent meetings, in terms of our principals being invited and led by Ministry of Health for the various guidelines and protocols, our staff, we have also circulated to all of our schools the information that has been sent to us from the Ministry of Health. And we continue to do the one on one in terms of engaging various stakeholders and various groupings. Our early childhood sector is a very important part of the education system and so our health and safety officers working with them because we know the little ones would touch their faces more would have the sneeze and cough and so we want to make sure that our practitioners on the ground are aware of what the guidelines and protocols are. Significant to everything we do is to reinforce the basic hygienic practices. And I was very pleased to hear one of our medical officers speak to the fact that we've always washed our hands and so we continue to say that these are some of the issues that bring about bigger issues thereafter. So reinforcement is therefore key to what we do. We partner with the Ministry of Health to ensure that there is consistent and accurate information. We also encourage school communities, educators, the general public in terms of responsible behavior. And we heard Dr. George speak about the possible impact of irresponsible behavior. And so there is a special mandate to us as educators to help educate and to maintain a sense of calm and to give accurate information. We want to as the Ministry of Education note that in all of our schools there is a school safety plan. So these are submitted to our health and safety officer on an annual basis. And it speaks to and is informed by our national influenza plan which you can find on the NIMO website. So we work alongside other stakeholders to ensure that safety remains the most important and pivotal plan for us for every school. We've also circulated our guidelines and protocols to our various schools. And as I said earlier, our health and safety officer is the one really charged with the responsibility to go back into the schools and ensure that if there are questions, there's need for clarification that is done. Article 35 of the Education Act section B speaks to closure of schools based on an outbreak and infectious diseases. We hope that we do not get to that point, but the Education Act has made provisions for that if we were to need that. We hope that this is a bridge we have to cross only if the need does arise, but I need to just mention this. Our main mandate, our main aim, our main objective is to continue to work collaboratively with the Ministry of Health and to follow their protocols led by the Chief Medical Officer and to deal with the situations at hand which are to engage, educate, communicate, and to ensure that the safety of all of our school students, our school community, our educators, and the general public are of the most significance to us. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Fiona Mayam. Right now we have the Fire Service, another group which play a very significant part in this process. We have the Assistant Divisional Officer of the Fire Service, Mr. Jermaine William, who will speak on the Fire Service response for COVID-19. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I think most of what I would have covered has already been spoken about or spoken to. So generally the Fire Service would be the first responders or the first responding agency to any major incident or situation within the country. Fortunately for us, we are not the first responders this time. However, the information that is provided by the first responders, the healthcare workers at the ports, the airports and the seaports is very, very vital to our operations. The St. Lucia Fire Service as an emergency responding agency, normally as part of our operating procedure, adopt certain protocols as it pertains to our response to certain infectious diseases and other emergencies. It is just part of what we do on a daily basis. As it pertains to COVID-19, however, we have had to adapt our infectious disease response protocol, which I have documented here. It doesn't necessarily speak to drastic or dramatic changes to what we have always done before. However, because the threat is almost imminent, we have recognized the need to adapt certain sections of that protocol to suit our needs right now. That response protocol speaks to our dispatch, how we dispatch our units to whatever situation that we have. Our questioning or information gathering from members of the public would be a little more in depth. In that regard, we have always asked the public to be particularly patient with us. As we said in the beginning, any emergency response requires certain pieces of pertinent information that is important in guiding us to that particular response. We want the public to be mindful that in order for us to make the appropriate response, we need to gather as much information as is possible. As it pertains to our response in-house to the training, we have always, as part of our procedures, our daily operating procedures, we do conduct training sessions at our stations and at our training facility. However, we have basically gone into a situation where we have to positively reinforce some of the training that we have already been doing. That is to say that we have ramped up our practical and our theoretical sessions to assist the officers who are not too comfortable with the donning and doffing of the PPE, with decontamination of themselves and the particular units. So we have actually ramped up that training. We have also taken it a step further and we have reached out to all our officers. We have officers who are currently on vacation and extended vacation and we have actually sent out information to those officers. We have brought in all our station commanders and have those persons retrained and we have actually sent them out to their stations and to the other community, sent them out to the stations and to the community as well. So we have them doing both in-house and out-house training. In-house, again, like I said, we have always observed certain protocols when it comes to hygiene. As you know, we deal with a lot of emergencies, so we have been doing what we feel is necessary at this junction. Again, part of our responsibilities as it put into COVID-19 lends us to work with our sister agencies and to cooperate very closely with them. Information is never too much and as much information as we receive it will guide how we act in terms of our response. So you can rest assured that the fire service is doing all in its power to help minimize the spread and to take all the necessary precautions as it pertains to dealing with those persons. Like it was said earlier, persons are stigmatized. We have found that persons who now just cough are frowned upon and pushed aside. So we are asking persons to be very tolerant. I mean we are asking persons to observe the general rules as it pertains to dealing with persons with infectious diseases. That was just an example. So the washing of hands, the avoiding contact, direct contact is important. Generally we ask persons to be very, very careful, especially around this time. The fire officers, unlike other members of the public who at the onset of any major incident, most members of the public will stay home. But the fire officers have to go in. So it is important that we lend them our support. We give them all the moral and emotional support that they need in order to perform their duties. We think that the education campaign that we have had in house has significantly reduced the underlying fears that our officers have had. And we think that we are on the right path in dealing with this virus. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Jermaine-William. Also thanks to the team for providing us with such valuable information on Sidrush's readiness to respond to COVID-19. Right now we will take a few questions from the audience. There is a roving mic and also we ask that for persons asking questions. If you can please state your name and your organization. Now Tia, my choice is this question is directed to Mr. Ragnan. From personal experience, I spoke about four persons who have been in travel back to St. Lucia recently, fairly recently, who have indicated that they haven't even been questioned on the airport. Do you think that our port health screening is as thorough as we're presenting it to be? Our screening is based on the information that we have. And we've heard of situations where a person claims or from third or fourth, fifth hand information sometimes you receive. And it's very difficult to be able to go back. And that's why I said early on in my presentation that if people are honest and truthful in giving us their travel history, we are better able to respond at that point in time. There are some hindrances that you have. There are many countries in the world today that do not stand passports. So even when people have traveled and you go through the passports looking for the countries that they've visited, you're not able to pick it up because there's no stump as to the country that they were at. It makes it extremely difficult. Our task is a very, very difficult task. We depend on intelligence sometimes from other agencies, from other institutions. But the thing is when we don't have that information at that point in time, it makes it very, very difficult to be able to deal with that situation and contain it. If any person know of an individual or visited a restricted country and is in our country, please let us know. We're going to follow up, monitor these persons. It's important for us because there are two things. One is persons who come to St. Lucia and they are not sick. The protocol is that they would go into quarantine. And quarantine is done in either one of two ways. That is home quarantine for people who meet the requirements to be home quarantine. It means that you need to have adequate facilities at home to be quarantined at home. So there must be a spare bedroom with separate toilet and bath because you do not want everybody in the household to be using the common amenities of that house. If that cannot be met at the private individual's house, then we have to take that person into a separate area where these conditions can be met. So that is for people who are well. They're not sick. But because they have been to a restricted area, we think that they are of interest to us. We would monitor these persons on a day-to-day basis. For persons who come into St. Lucia and they are sick, they have respiratory symptoms, they do not get to go to home to be quarantined. They get to go to the hospital to be isolated. That is the procedure. So like I said, there's no foolproof system that you can have. But we want persons to be honest and tell us exactly where they have been, give us information so that we can arrest a situation at the ports before people begin to mingle with the wider society and the chances of spread infection becomes greater. So we would be happy if anybody has information and they want to call us in and tell us that we can follow up on because all of us are in the same situation. And we need to work together on this. Good morning. I'm Miguel, Favourite NBC. I have two questions, but the first one is for you, Mr. Raghunan. The second is for Dr. Belmar, the CMO. The first one is Mr. Raghunan. Just to follow up with my colleague's question. Up till yesterday, information reached me and you could confirm whether this is not the case, is that the temperature testing is not being done at all our ports. Can you confirm whether this is the case or not? I know that we have received additional equipment that have gone to all the ports. Not every single person is tested because again, travel history is important for us. Many countries have implemented the thermoscanners. That is, everybody who comes through the port immediately gets screened. The science is saying to us that this is highly ineffective because people take medication when they travel and if they had a temperature, then the panadol brings it down. You cannot pick up that temperature. The other thing is the sensitivity of the equipment. It doesn't always pick up the temperatures that you have. It's a very expensive exercise because apart from having these large thermoscanners, you need to have persons monitoring these pieces of instrument to give you real-time information. As people go through, anybody who has elevated temperature is immediately taken offline. You get that information and the communication going back and forth. For us in St. Lucia, we do temperature screening, but what it is that we do is we use the handheld thermometer so you don't touch the person, but it's a laser-based thermometer and you're able to get that temperature reading. We do it for persons who are again of interest. Somebody may come through the port and not necessarily be temperature checked, but it does not mean that there are no temperature scanners there available. It's done on a needs basis. Again, the question is based on information which came to me last night. First of all, can you confirm or can you tell us how many people we may have just in quarantine right now, maybe not under suspicion or maybe present in illness symptoms? Number two, we understand a nurse from the Mental Wellness Centre has been quarantined as well. She came in and shared a travel history from New York and New Jersey. Can you confirm whether this is the case as well? Okay, before I comment, I just want to clear up that as per our protocols, not every single passenger gets questioned or gets screened. I just want to clear that up. It is persons that we have received information on based on their travel history, those persons we pull out in our quarantine for review and possible isolation or we put in our quarantine room at the ports. Those are the persons we pull out and I just want to indicate that we have ordered and received 50 handheld temperature scanners. Like we said earlier in our preparedness, those are one of the things that we were looking at and we have been using them, but not for every single passenger. This would be labor intensive and the information would not be futile based on the time we sit. So the expectation is not that every single passenger that comes in will be questioned or temperature scanned. These temperature scanners have been coming in very useful for us at the ports that we receive passengers from Martinique. You were asking in terms of quarantine. We have put in quarantine a total of 11 persons. We presently have two persons under quarantine at this moment if my memory serves me right. And we do have another person that we have in isolation. She does not meet the case definition of a suspect's case, but out of caution, we have decided to isolate her and test. So we have not recorded her as a suspect's case, but just out of caution because of her travel history, the numbers of patients within those countries, it's not high enough for us to risk it as a high risk area, so she meets the definition. But out of extreme caution, we decided to isolate her and send a sample for testing. There was another question? Yes, it's a nurse. Can you send for one of her test results and send them to the next victim? The test results will be... The sample will be sent today. We're using the normal route, so I would not like to give an exact time. But when it comes out, we can give an update. When was she isolated? She was isolated from yesterday. And I just want to indicate that this is an ongoing process because the Ministry of Health, we are being extremely cautious and persons who meet maybe close or not exactly the case definition, we prefer to err on the side of caution. So it doesn't mean that it is a case, it doesn't mean that it is a suspect's case, but we are trying to be very cautious so that if there were to be somebody who we could reduce the possibility of possible contamination. Don Nicholas from DBS Television. The persons who are under quarantine at this time, does it include a foreign national from the UK? Because we're getting reports about that and that at a particular medical facility and that persons had to be turned away as a result? No, we don't have a foreign national from the UK. No, we don't have a foreign national from the UK. Shekel Gillan, Luke St. Lucian News. What is the budget allocated towards the coroner of Paris? Please give me one minute. So give an idea of the initial budget that we're using. Upgrading of our isolation unit to the 15 bed was in the total of 112,992. Salaries and allowances for public health nurses and environmental health officers, as Mr. Ragnan indicated, we had to increase the human resource. For six month period, 353,872. Retrofitting for expansion of isolation, 156,773. Purchase of equipment and furniture, $132,050. The initial budget towards communication, 60,215. The initial procurement for medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, for the health services, 242,173. That is what I have with me. However, the equipment for testing that we procured is not included in this. So this is just a part of the official budget. There are lots of other costs that are not reflected here because the equipment for diagnostic capacity is not included in this budget. Is Ruff Island still being considered as a quarantine area? If you listened carefully to the briefing during our discussion, based on the fact that Rat Island in our Public Health Act is designated a quarantine facility, it was brought up. But at this point it is not being used or being seen as a quarantine facility. I think it was just a, by the way, comment. We indicated earlier that we have been doing home quarantine or quarantine with a guest house that we have an arrangement with and we have an isolation unit at a health care facility and that is what we have been using to date. Is there a need to get assistance from Cuba like what Jamaica is currently doing right now? We have been looking at quite a few of our partner countries and it is part of the discussion in terms of supporting human resource. We are also reviewing some information about the amount of Cuba of possibly effective medication. So we are looking at all of the different possibilities to see how we manage if needed. I think it is for Mr. Rabinanan. I think the last time following our situation I think it was a Russian national who came in on a yacht. There were some protocols put in place. I think we are looking at funneling our pleasure, your traffic to a particular area. One question someone posed was what happens with those individuals who it has become a norm for them to dock or to both outside. They have the dinghies and they make their way on to land. What controls do we have in place for this? Our ports are very challenging and we have power spots. Port health is one measure that has been implemented and strengthened in terms of getting the information and given clearance. There are other agencies who needs to continue to monitor our waters and so the Marine Police, for example, has an important role in terms of ensuring that these vessels are managed adequately. The other thing that has happened in the past is there are certain laboratories or courtesies that have been extended for certain types of vessels and we are very clear that given the situation you have now you need to cut back on some of these liberties and persons coming into the island illegally is no longer accepted because we recognize that somebody may come off a vessel and get into any one of our social activities so somebody may go to Marigold and not be cleared and yet end up in Anselore, for example, on a Friday night and grow a zealot that kind of thing. We, as best as possible want this to be controlled and we think that the police, immigration, Marine Police have very critical roles in terms of ensuring that this doesn't happen. We also need to continue to communicate through the last pandemic of tourism these decisions because like I said, under normal circumstances there are courtesies that are extended but now we need to cut back on a number of these. Welcome to Allis Hot 7 TV in continuation of what Mr. Ferrier just asked. You made an appeal to people asking them to be honest about their travel history but as you also mentioned there will be people who will not be honest and deliberately come here knowing what they want to do. So with that said in the cases of persons coming from affected countries and especially those who know that they are exhibiting some of the symptoms are there measures that will be put in place to see that these people are taken to task for endangering the lives of people in St. Lucia when they come through? We have certain laws. So I spoke about the quarantine legislation. There's also the Public Health Act. They make provision in terms of penalties and fines for withholding information giving wrong information and that kind of thing. This is not really the avenue that would like to push you at this point in time. We prefer to prevent rather than to respond to situation. Therefore if it comes down to implementing a penalty that would be used as last resort for us. But at this juncture where we are at now is to continue to work with travelling public to continue to work with agencies trying as best as possible getting information because whether somebody lied or not and they come to St. Lucia and they present respiratory symptoms we would still have to respond to them manage that case, get that information. It's only afterwards then you can decide how do you want to deal with that person whether you want to take legal action or not. But the threat would have already been at our doors and therefore we want to prevent instead of responding. But there are clear penalties in legislation that can be implemented in case of violation of this legislation. Considering that persons are still coming in illegally from Martinique into St. Lucia, is there need to cancel the grossly Friday night activity as a result of the recent cases confirmed in Martinique? No I just want to respond first because you seem to have information that we don't have you said that people are coming in illegally and we don't have that information here so we cannot respond to that so I just wanted to say to a friend that I don't know that people are coming in illegally to grossly night so I'm not able to respond to that Can I go generally with that though? My question would first follow up to this so you could probably answer accordingly. Even though we know that generally the policy makers are supposed to take the advice and the guidance from sorry you the technocrats we know in our Caribbean culture it works the other way but at what point do the ministry see it fit to advise the government? At what point will it be critical enough to advise that we should cancel certain mass crowd events, particularly those which involve the influx of visitors like jazz, carnival and these things? That's an important question mass crowd events during outbreaks or impending outbreaks requires a level of risk assessment risk assessment which involves the type of outbreak, the type of activity the number of persons where the persons are coming from and also the measures that would be in place at the activity to reduce the possible transmission of infection during the activity. Right now in Senusha we don't have any cases of COVID-19 so we need to look at the dates of our activities that are coming up that is we have jazz coming up and we have carnival in July so the Ministry of Health we will be meeting actually this afternoon with the tourism sector we are going to do a full review and assessment of those activities looking at some of the points that I indicated earlier and make a decision as to whether or not we need to to cancel those events but it has to be done in a systematic way looking at some of the factors that I said where do the people come from are they coming from areas of high risk coming in and what measures if we do agree to have them what measures do we need to put in place to reduce the impact during those activities so a number of decisions would have to be made do we cancel it or do we do the activity but put in the extra measures to reduce importation to reduce spread to reduce transmission during the event and we also need to look at who are the persons who attend those events with COVID-19 we are aware that our risk groups tend to be the elderly persons with comorbid conditions so all of those we need to look at rate it do the assessment and then make a determination Solage Alfred HTS newsforce in regards to yesterday's scare with the TUI plane was it first refused entry to land in another country and if so why was it then allowed to land in St. Lucia from the information we received from from the flight the initial indication was that it was a chronic disease however we took all of the necessary precautions to confirm this before allowing anybody off the flight and this is a decision that we could have made we could have decided that the flight not be allowed however there was someone on board it was a 54 year old female who needed medical attention and based on our health assessments there was not a risk to the passengers on the plane or to our general public so we made a decision to allow the flight to come in and ensure that she got the medical care she has since been discharged from the hospital and she is stable and doing well and to date we do not have any information to indicate any kind of infectious individual or infectious agent on the flight in country transmission plan you mentioned five community clinics in Grosilae, Dennery, Soufracastres and Vuford can we get the locations of those and also is there any plan as it relates to the public sector because we understand that the education sector does have a plan but the public sector the other public agencies okay we are looking at those centers and it is subject to change as we should probably let our our principal nursing officer for community who's here would you like to give some information okay I'll go ahead we are looking at the Soufrac hospital the Dennery hospital the Grosilae polyclinic we are still trying to confirm between using the La Clare wellness center instead of the castries wellness center because we have some concerns with the flow of patients at the castries wellness center so we are looking at the La Clare wellness center for the castries basin and the Vuford wellness center for the south the other question was in terms of the other sectors we have been working with a wide range of sectors and let me just thank the ministry of education for they've been collaborating very closely with us from day one initially our concern was our students who were in different countries that were affected and they were able to give us the list so that we can facilitate the safe return of some of them and knowing that it is very difficult to control social distancing with school children because they don't understand keeping a distance children eat from each other they drink from each other they all over each other it's very difficult to institute social distancing within the school though from what we note of the disease the children do very well they get it mildly but our risk factor for the schools is the fact that in our we've had to adapt and look at our local situation in almost every household where there's a school child there's a grandparent there's an elderly parent or relative with chronic disease so we realize that the children may not even show much of signs symptoms or be sick but they'll come home and bring it to somebody who can get very sick so that is why education has been an extremely important partner to us to reduce transmission and to ensure that they put the necessary measures in place and if need be based on how our in-country transmission goes and a decision may need to be made to close schools I also want to highlight a very important initiative that we participated in on was it on Tuesday one of our local private physicians Dr. Tanya Bobra she commenced this initiative after a short discussion with her to facilitate the donation of hand sanitizers to all of the schools so in collaboration with NatMed who's agreed to produce it and a number of private entities they've been able to buy and contribute to provide hand sanitizers to all of our schools primary and secondary to start off so I just want to commend that level of private sector involvement and donations that we are looking forward to working with other private entities to strengthen this venture what was your second question the other private sectors we've been working with the Chamber of Commerce the businesses, the hotels and we've also sent out guidelines for workplaces for the public sector and for some of them it has to be adapted to their work environment but we have sent guidelines to the public sector for example encouraging them to ensure there is hand washing with soap for employees the use of hand sanitizer at strategic points and we have also asked within all workplaces both public and private that anybody exhibiting respiratory signs and symptoms from now that they be sent home we are trying very hard to reduce the spread of any form of respiratory illness at this point so some of the guidelines include that that we have shared with the other public sector and the level of risk obviously depends on the type of work that you do my question is to Dr. Myers it's in relation to well right now we are coming up to the exam the exam stage of the year where you have the grade six is about to do their common entrance and the fifth former is about to embark on the CXC examinations so with that said when that time comes we will have the virus which is practically on our doorstep so in the event that in the months of June, July the infection is here just saying in the event that is happening if the infection is here and people are A. calling in sick, students are sick or parents are taking precautionary measures by not sending their children to school are there any measures put in place to see that these students don't miss out on an opportunity to do their exams good question and also relevant question I can tell you that the office of CXC with the registrar Dr. Wesley they've already organized with our local registrar and throughout the Caribbean various meetings they'll be Zoom meetings that will engage the stakeholders throughout the Caribbean as to CXC in particular and we know that they do a range of exams for our fifth formers so that is a discussion that's already been had throughout the Caribbean locally reference our common entrance examination as I said to you we continue to be proactive we continue to engage and communicate with our various stakeholders as a team we are looking at our options and as they become available as the situation changes we will let the public know exactly what the options are but we must reiterate that our students, their education and particularly assessments that determine a lot of their future is of paramount importance to us so we will do everything in our power to ensure that our students are not negatively impacted because of this situation that is at hand okay thank you everyone it was definitely a very fruitful discussion on this topic and right now we've come to the end of our conference on coronavirus which is COVID-19 we want to thank all of our listeners and also the audience who have been part of this discussion on behalf of the entire production team at GIS NTN we want to thank you thanks for watching