BELIZE CITY, Tues. June 9, 2020– A number of Belizeans who have been left stranded overseas due to the global lockdown are trying to get home. To do so, they must be willing to undergo processes which the government has mandated. That process begins with the filling out of an application that is available at the government’s COVID-19 website.

Last Friday, the 53-day period that the country has enjoyed without anyone testing positive for the novel coronavirus was broken when a repatriated Belizean man who arrived on a cruise ship tested positive for the virus.

The experience with that cruise ship passenger, who has been dubbed patient #19, has caused the Ministry of Health to adjust its testing protocol, as Director of Health Services, Dr. Marvin Manzanero, explained today on the Ask the Experts webcast.

“Five Belizeans arrived on the flight last Friday and more are anticipated to arrive this coming Friday. Based on the experience we have had with patient #19, we have decided and the ministry felt that we were going to shift around the testing process that we are doing. We are no longer going to be doing random testing in the general public in asymptomatic individuals.

“We are going to still continue to test anybody who has flu-like symptoms, anybody who has influenza-like illnesses or is hospitalized for severe acute respiratory illness, but we are going to now be testing people once they start arriving in Belize and prior to them leaving the quarantine facility,’ said Dr. Manzanero.

Dr. Manzanero explained that some families have started to arrive through the Guatemalan border and that two families arrived last week.

Dr. Manzanero noted, “These are people who had medical conditions, and so they were allowed to go on quarantine home, and we have had notes of people who have sought medical care outside Belize and have died outside and we are in the process of also bringing the cadavers back home, and we are aware of the people coming in through the northern border and are now going to start going into different facilities.”

“For now, the hotels that we are using in Corozal, Princess, is going to be used for potential use later on in the week, but Biltmore and Radisson have some of the persons under quarantine. Lamanai Landing in Orange Walk — we are looking at a couple of hotels in Cayo and a hotel in San Pedro that we routinely have been using,” he further said.

Dr. Manzanero also explained that many Belizeans who have applied to be included in the repatriation program are coming up with a number of excuses, mostly health-related, to justify their requests to be allowed to spend their quarantine at home, instead of at the designated locations.

“We are asking at least, from the Ministry of Health’s standpoint, that when you cite the medical condition and that being the reason why you should be quarantined at home and not in a hotel, you will have to provide medical evidence for that, because we are noticing that the first list that we got from people who wanted to come from the US, almost everybody is citing some medical condition as to the reason why they can’t go and quarantine in a hotel,” said Manzanero.

“People are saying, ‘I’m diabetic, I can’t go on quarantine in a hotel; I have high blood pressure, I can’t go and quarantine in a hotel. That alone is not going to be the criteria for you to be isolated or ask to be quarantined at home. You will have to show that you are acutely ill, that you were seeking medical condition outside Belize, and then became ill or are still recovering from whatever you went to do outside Belize, and that would be a condition where we would consider placing you on quarantine at home, because it’s close to 600 Belizeans,” he said.

“If we start allowing everybody to go quarantine at home, that becomes a nightmare in terms of us tracking people across the country, versus being quarantined in a set place such as a hotel, where you can set up all the mechanisms to have a better control of what’s happening, not that we want to control persons, but I hope that now you can appreciate why special conditions apply,” Dr. Manzanero explained.

Feature photo: Dr. Marvin Manzanero