Cayman’s COVID-19 policy was a “stab in the dark” a lawyer claimed at a Grand Court civil hearing before Justice Jalil Asif on Monday.
Rupert Wheeler said the rules that kept a then 8-year-old boy in quarantine for almost a month “didn’t seem to have be based on any data at all”.
He added the view of the authorities was it was “all so uncertain we can essentially take a stab in the dark. That’s essentially what it amounts to, in our submission.”
Wheeler, who appeared for the family of the boy, and Deputy Solicitor General Marilyn Brandt, acting for the attorney general and the Ministry of Health, delivered their summing-up arguments in the three-day civil action.
The family filed a petition in the Grand Court in 2022 against the attorney general, the health ministry and the Health Services Authority that claimed the child’s human rights had been breached when he was forced to isolate long after he was likely to be able to infect other people.
The HSA was later removed as a respondent.
The plaintiffs also questioned the need for a clear PCR test as a condition of release from quarantine.
During Monday’s hearing, Wheeler added that around the time the child was quarantined in early 2022, there were 17,687 COVID-19 cases, with 4,553 of them the more easily transmitted, but less severe, Omicron variant.
He said evidence from medical experts earlier in the case had highlighted that Cayman had “one of the highest levels of vaccination in the world”.
Wheeler told the court that vaccination had 90% effectiveness in the avoidance of hospitalisation and death, saying, “A substantial level of protection existed in the community because of these two facts.”
He added that the boy’s quarantine period was also inconsistent with government policy at the time, telling the court that if the human rights argument was accepted by the court, the family would seek damages.
Wheeler told the court last Friday that the most common international standard at the time was five to 10 days of isolation for the dominant Omicron variant of the virus.
‘Discrimination’
He claimed that the different treatment of travellers to Cayman who arrived during that time amounted to discrimination against the boy.
Wheeler highlighted that an unvaccinated traveller who came to the island during the crisis was quarantined and released after 10 days if they had a negative lateral flow test.
He said the child, who had not been vaccinated, had been unlawfully discriminated against because he was ordered to remain in isolation past 10 days although he too had taken a lateral flow test that came up negative.
But Brandt told the court on Monday that the health authorities had acted in the best interests of the country as it battled an “unprecedented pandemic”.
She said the question amid an “unprecedented pandemic” was whether it was “appropriate action to take” not whether “the confinement of the boy was consistent with the policy at the time”.
Brandt added that Dr. Samuel Williams-Rodriguez, the director of primary healthcare services and medical officer for health, was responsible for overseeing public health related to COVID-19.
‘Gold standard’
She insisted “informed decisions” had been made and the PCR test was the “gold standard”, a view backed by Williams-Rodriguez and medical experts called to give evidence.
Brandt said that use of a “low threshold” on CT (‘cycle threshold’) values for release from quarantine would have meant “an increased amount of people being released from isolation and increased transmission”.
She added that it was still not known the amount of virus it took to transmit COVID-19 and that was the sum of scientific evidence “then as well as now”.
Brandt said CT values, which measure the level of virus present in a sample, were used “along with other yardsticks”.
She added, “The decision to apply CT values in the Cayman Islands and an isolation policy followed established practices, even if opinions on it varied from time to time.”
Brandt said the “right to private family life was not absolute” and that the circumstances of the pandemic were serious enough for strict quarantine measures.
But she added that the authorities had “determined that, given the extensive period [the boy] had been in isolation, the likelihood of him transmitting the virus to another person was so slight he could be released” from his marathon confinement.
Brandt said it was also important to remember that “at this stage, children were still unvaccinated”.
Asif questioned why different tests had been used and whether the government policy should have used “the same test to get consistent results”.
He asked, if they were relying on CT values “to decide when people should be released, should it not be the same type of test in order to make sure the CT values are compatible”?
And Asif said a key question was “whether it would have been appropriate to release the boy earlier”.
Brandt told him the policy in force was not invalidated “even though the method might have switched halfway”.
The court was also told “there was still a risk” in releasing the child, “even though the potential might have been less”.
But Asif asked what had happened between day 11 of the boy’s quarantine and day 24, when it was decided to release him from quarantine without a further test.
Nigel Gale, who appeared alongside Brandt, told Asif “there was no evidence either way on that”.
Asif reserved judgment in the case until a later date.
