BRA staff to be tested

Workers at the state-owned revenue collection agency in Holetown, St James are being tested for the COVID-19 virus and have been placed in self-quarantine.

That’s because the Barbados Revenue Authority (BRA) has decided not to take any chances with what they suspect was a positive case coming into contact with staff.

Public Relations Officer Carolyn Williams-Gayle told Barbados TODAY tonight that the office has now been closed to facilitate contact tracing.

“That office has been closed for sanitization as well as to allow staff to undergo testing and self-quarantine,” an earlier message to the workers stated.

They were also assured they would be updated on any further developments.

However, the employees’ bargaining agent, the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) is not pleased with the way in which visitors in particular are being monitored while in quarantine.

“You can’t blame the staff for that, but I wish people would be more careful. I am not sure of the circumstances under which the issue would have arisen, but people travelling or known to be travelling need to be careful,” General Secretary of the NUPW Delcia Burke told Barbados TODAY this evening.

Burke was particularly dissatisfied with health authorities’ approach to monitoring visitors who are quarantined.

“A lot of people are coming here who are supposed to be on quarantine and they are walking around because nobody is really checking behind them,” the union leader said.

Only yesterday, the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP) voiced alarm at the Government new travel protocols which went into effect today.

In a statement, BAMP warned that up to 13 per cent of possible COVID-19 positive travelers could slip through the system.

The medical body said the amended protocols that target people from medium and high-risk countries such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago and several South American and European states spend only two days in quarantine after arrival in Barbados with a negative PCR COVID-19 test result.

The five-day period before the second COVID-19 test includes the days after the traveler does the test in his or her home country.

BAMP added: “The current protocol states that travelers from high-risk countries will be allowed to leave quarantine on the basis of a negative test done 4 – 5 days after the last negative test result.”

“This would imply that a high-risk person who tested 72 hours before travel, who presents an acceptable negative test on arrival, would be able to be tested again and leave quarantine in as little as one or two days after arrival in Barbados,” BAMP said.

The doctors argued that based on a review of the available evidence including the possibility of false negative testing, such an approach would fail to detect and quarantine nine to 33 per cent of travelers who contract the virus between their initial test and arrival in the island. (EJ)