Persons not compliant with quarantine guidelines may be issued with court orders

COURT ORDERS may be issued to persons who have been placed in mandatory quarantine if they are not compliant with specific quarantine guidelines.

This was stated by Dr Simone Keizer- Beache, the chief medical officer, on Sunday during the ‘Issues at Hand’ radio programme on We FM.

She was responding to a question about what measures have been put in place to ensure that persons in mandatory and self-quarantine adhere to the protocols in place.

The chief medical officer said that persons in mandatory quarantine are usually visited by health personnel.

“When we determine that the person is probably less than compliant, we will do the court orders and we will ask for the assistance of the police — the mandatory ones,” Keizer- Beache said.

And so, if persons refuse to adhere to the requirements, court orders will have to be issued.

St Vincent and the Grenadines, as of yesterday, March 23 has made it a requirement for persons coming from the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and countries within the European Union (EU) to self-quarantine for 14 days.

“The voluntary ones, that’s what we are asking for, this is voluntary for persons coming from the UK, the US and the EU, we will be doing checks. We will be doing random checks and we will be doing phone checks on those persons,” Keizer-Beache said.

Previously, the Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment imposed requirements for persons coming to SVG from China, Iran, South Korea and Italy to self-quarantine as well.

“We are looking at a completely different number because when we were dealing with just China and Iran and those countries, the numbers we were dealing with was much lower than what we will have to deal with now in terms of the US, UK and the EU,” she said.