Flight crew test positive in SVG after getting COVID results waiver
Two members of a group allowed to travel to St. Vincent without COVID-19 negative test results although they departed a country with community spread of the illness, tested positive for the virus after arriving in SVG.
iWitness News was reliably informed that the positive test results among the six-member group came even as they were lobbying health officials to allow them to quarantine for three days, rather than 14.
The six persons arrived in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on Jan. 16, 2021 — amidst a spike in cases locally.
iWitness News has obtained a Jan. 15, 2020 document in which Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Simone Keizer-Beache, as chair of the Health Services Committee of the National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) granted the exemption.
“Passengers listed above is granted permission to enter the state of St Vincent and the Grenadines,” the document said.
It also identified a hotel in St. Vincent at which the persons were to quarantine.
The document further said that the passengers were required to be tested on arrival in SVG, to quarantine for 14-days until cleared by the Ministry of Health, and to be retested as stated within the ministry’s protocol.
At a press conference on Tuesday, iWitness News asked the Ministry of Health what informed the decision to allow the waiver and whether any of those persons tested positive for COVID-19 while in quarantine.
“Okay, so the query is whether or not the Ministry of Health used its discretion to grant a permission for some travellers to enter the country,” Keizer-Beache said in response.
She said that the Health Services Subcommittee “has various protocols and these protocols — the general protocol, as you remember, at the bottom has at the discretion of the chief medical officer or the medical officer of health.
“The particular situation is a matter that was assessed as persons travelling in a private plane, and therefore, they were all of the same risk level to themselves, they were then instructed to quarantine as everyone else would coming from a high-risk country,” the chief medical officer said.
“And on that basis, because those persons were not posing a risk to anyone else on the flight, they were allowed to come into the country on the discretion of the chief medical officer, myself,” she further stated.
“In terms of the other question, you are asking for the personal, private and confidential information of a client of the ministry of health and it would be against my ethical standards to provide you with that information,” Keizer-Beache said.
Wasn’t it against ethical standards to allow the exemption for those persons? Yet when locals returning home are asked to stay the length of quarantine and foot the bill, why no discretion for those persons?
These people have to use the toilet and come into contact with the stewardesses who come into contact with the passengers..come on Dr?!
What ethical standards? May I please rephrase? Stupidity!
Like seriously smfh
We all are Doomed in this country
How can the powers that do that
Lord help us
We’re all gunna die! Oh me! oh my! We’re all gunna die!
This just reeks on so many levels.
Keiser-Beach has been a very silly girl.
Should not the discretionary use of any covid19 related protocols by the CHIEF Medical Officer et al include some common sense? We’re not in the Twilight Zone; were these travelers essential persons???
This is definitely a double standard system. Vincentians can’t quarantine in their homes and have to pay hotels for 14 days, but visitors have a different system. Sorry Dr. you blew it.
Kary mullis inventor of the pcr test on record said you cannot use it to diagnose any disease, wake up people. The great reset is an evil plan, educate yourselves stop listening to politicians they don’t care about you.
The people and doctors that are helping us, do you think they are God’s,and that they can not get sick they know first hand how dangerous this is, you think they want to die or there family to die , from THIS; come on people have a heart for orhers who are trying to do Somthing; you just putting these had workers and doctors down; remember they are people just like you are me God bless us all