Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Sandra Husbands.
The Barbados Embassy in Beijing remains in daily contact with all Barbadians currently in China, and at present, none of them are showing symptoms of the coronavirus.
Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Sandra Husbands, speaking to the media on Friday on the sidelines of a prize giving presentation which was held in the conference room of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, said they are in contact with the three people in the affected area and the other 75 or so Barbadians who live, work and study across China.
“What they have been doing is collaborating with the ambassadors from CARICOM... they are sitting and discussing in an emergency how we are going to deal with this. So we are making preparations for any eventuality. To date, as far as we know, because of daily contact, they are fine they are not showing any symptoms and we are very grateful for that and we would ask the nation to continue to pray,” she said.
She continued, “But they are trying to make sure, for example, that if they are going to be running short on supplies, how could we get supplies to them [and] what is it we need to do. So this is a daily monitoring that is going on with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, both here in capital and in our embassy in Beijing.”
Asked about whether there are any plans to bring those persons back home, she said it is something they have been looking at, but noted the dynamics of doing so would not be easy.
“It is not as straightforward as it would look, bearing in mind that they don’t want people to leave and spread anything, so the Ministry here at capital and the Ambassador are connecting to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and discussing in the eventuality what would we need to do, what would be the steps and so on. So the discussions are there, but at the moment we are holding pattern... we haven’t seen any reason as yet to be deeply alarmed and we believe they should be able to ride it out. But as I said, we are monitoring them every day, every day,” she stated.
On the matter of the travel bans being issued by other countries and whether Barbados would follow suit, she said that call is one for the Ministry of Health and Wellness to make if they think we have reached that stage.
“...So you are going to have a limitation on people who are actually going to leave China. For them to get as far as this region they have to stop in a number of places – they have to stop in London or they have to stop in New York. They are not going to get any further than there, because once you have come out from there, they are going to ask you to go in quarantine. So as yet there is no need for Barbados to have that on board because the global response will take care of that movement,” Husbands assured.
Nevertheless, she said protocols are in place in case someone slips through and they need to be quarantined, that that can be done. (JRT)