TM & © 2020 Burger King Corporation. Delivery now available on Eastern Avenue cayman compass Your most trusted news source Established 1965 $1 | Funding local journalism | Weekly, 8-14 May 2020 Editorial: Cayman needs coherent social assistance programme Page 4 Port referendum appeal case heard Page 6 The story of one COVID-19 test Page 8 All aboard Stranded family awaits baby’s arrival on sailboat. Page 7 Photo: Taneos Ramsay640-FILM (640-3456) Cayman Cinema@cbcinema6cbcinema6 Camana Bay Cinema is currently closed. Stay home and stay safe Cayman. Follow us on social media for Movie Trivia Tuesdays. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY: Cayman Compass Ltd. Compass Centre, Shedden Road, George Town, Cayman Islands SEND US YOUR VIEWS OR NEWS: P.O. Box 1365 Grand Cayman, KY1-1108 Cayman Islands Telephone: (345) 815-0095 Email: newsdesk@compassmedia.ky ADVERTISE WITH US: T: (345) 949-5111 E: sales@compassmedia.ky W: caymancompass.com PUBLISHER KATHLEEN CAPETTA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF KEVIN MORALES Partly cloudy skies with a 20% chance of showers. weather Forecast today Cayman Islands 86°F 75°F HIGH LOW WINDS North to northeast at 10 to 15 knots. SEA STATE Moderate with wave heights of 3 to 5 feet. FIND US ONLINE Caymancompass.com Facebook.com/Caycompass cayman_compass@cayCompassCayman Compass JAMES WHITTAKER jwhittaker@compassmedia.ky Many of the COVID-19 restrictions on Little Cayman and Cayman Brac were lifted this week after widespread testing on both islands returned negative results. On Tuesday, Premier Alden McLaughlin announced that after more than 90% of the population on Little Cayman tested negative, the hard and soft curfews were being removed as the island moved into ‘Level 2’ – minimal suppression. And on Thursday, he stated that restrictions for Cayman Brac were being eased after 400 residents there tested negative for the virus. He said new specific regulations had been drafted for the Brac and would come into effect once gazetted on Thursday. The beaches will reopen, restaurants will be allowed to serve food to diners outside, and fishing and boating can resume, with a restriction of no more than two people on a boat at any one time. Gatherings will be restricted to 25 people and social distancing must be maintained. Churches will be allowed to reopen, with this limitation. Bars on the Brac will remain closed until at least 50% of the Brac’s population, which totals about 2,000 people, has tested negative, McLaughlin said. The hard curfew on Cayman Brac has been lifted on Sundays but a night-time curfew from 8pm to 5am remains in place. There is no change to the restrictions on Grand Cayman and both the premier and Police Commissioner Derek Byrne said they were concerned about the amount of people on the road. Meanwhile, at the daily briefing on Thursday, health officials reported two new cases of the virus after the latest batch of 76 results was reported. This brings to 80 the total number of cases in the Cayman Islands. Dr. John Lee, Cayman’s chief medical officer, said screenings were going well and the bulk of medical personnel had been tested. “We are already well into phase two, which includes frontline people such as supermarkets, RCIPS, Fire [Service], quite a bit of the prison has been done,” he added. He said the testing was vital so anyone who had COVID-19 could be isolated and a protective ring put around them. Lee said there were some concerns around people not turning up for testing appointments. He added that health officials wanted to be able to test hundreds of people a day but it was more difficult to get to people in the private sector. For larger companies, he said public health officials were prepared to go direct to those businesses and take samples at their premises. If a frontline worker is confirmed as having the virus, he said that would not create unmanageable complications for contact tracing. Of the 80 cases, one has died, nine are symptomatic, 33 are asymptomatic, two are in hospital for unrelated conditions, and 35 are fully recovered. Restrictions lifted on Sister Islands Quiet reflection replaces parades for VE Day commemoration Veterans in Cayman will quietly mark a momentous milestone on Friday – the 75th anniversary of the victory of allied forces in Europe that ushered in the beginning of the end of the Second World War. Amid the turmoil of the coronavirus crisis, some feel Victory in Europe Day will inevitably be overlooked this year. But the global pandemic and the extraordinary conditions that many are living under have drawn comparisons with a wartime situation. Queen Elizabeth II invoked the spirit of World War II in a rare national address last month when she encouraged British subjects to show the resolve and character of generations past as they cope with the COVID-19 lockdown. “We will meet again”, she said, referencing the most famous song of the war years. VE Day is the anniversary of the formal acceptance by the Allies of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces in 1945. For the Cayman Islands Veterans Association, the anniversary is a major occasion and well worth commemorating. Though there can be no parades or services of remembrance because of the current ban on public gatherings, the association and its members instead are urging people to quietly reflect on the sacrifices made. It will be a marked contrast to the scenes witnessed 75 years ago. “The joy on 8 May 1945 is easy to imagine,” the association said in a press release. “Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as a young princess was among the hundreds of thousands celebrating in London’s West End.” The Bluff on Cayman Brac. Some of the island's restrictions are being lifted as a large percentage of the population tested negative for COVID-19. 2#StayingHomeisCaymankind graphics@gov.ky | © Crown Copyright 2020 DATED: APRIL 30, 2020 Coronavirus Information and Advice Frequently cleanse hands with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Wash your hands Catch a cough or sneeze in a tissue and bin it. If tissue is not available, cough or sneeze into your elbow (not your hands). Practice Respiratory Hygiene Avoid all nonessential outings and stay inside as much as possible. Avoid outings Avoid close contact and stay 6 feet away from people where possible. Maintain Social Distancing Avoid wearing a surgical mask unless advised by a medical professional. Homemade masks can be used in public spaces to reduce the potential for droplet spread. Masks (surgical or non-surgical) can only work in combination with frequent handwashing with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub and social distancing at all the times. Wear a mask Symptoms: Coughing, High Temperature, Shortness of Breath What Steps Should You Take? Going to the hospital without calling ahead could expose more people to the virus. As most symptoms are mild please call the HSA hotline for advice if you should self-isolate at home or if you should seek further care. Call the HSA hotline on 1-800-534-8600 if: • you've been in close contact with someone with coronavirus • you think you might have coronavirus If you have a medical emergency, dial 911 For the latest updates and information, please visit HSA.ky/public-health/coronavirus or www.gov.ky/coronavirus Prevention Tips cayman compass 3 FRIDAY, 8 MAY 2020EDITORIAL BOARD It is now customary to begin any conversation about COVID-19 with the observation that these are unprecedented times. Policies that were unimaginable a few short weeks ago have quickly become a daily reality. The same type of radical thinking that has been rightly used to justify border closures, curfews and business lockdowns, must now be applied to helping those who are suffering the consequences of those decisions. Nothing should be off the table – including direct welfare payments to those left without jobs. It may go against the grain for a country that values an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. But when the right to work has been taken away – albeit for very valid public-health reasons – the equation changes. Cayman is facing its third major crisis in 16 years – Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the global recession of 2008 and now the COVID-19 pandemic. Each time, Cayman’s economic structure has resulted in a shrinking labour force, lower consumer demand and a downward spiral that drags Caymanian jobs with it. Assistance for those impacted by these events remains piecemeal. Regardless of one’s ideology on social-welfare assistance, this time is different. This time the government has ordered businesses to shut and consumers to stay at home in the interest of public health. If these efforts to protect the community at large cause mass unemployment, it is not just a matter of welfare policy that those out of work are supported. It is a matter of fairness and social cohesion. A report commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce predicts more than 5,000 Caymanians could lose their jobs this year. To put this in context: in 2012, when Caymanian unemployment reached 10.5%, there were fewer than 2,000 Caymanians recorded as out of work. It is laudable that government has turned around its finances, reduced public debt and accumulated reserves for a rainy day. It is raining now. Even Bermuda, which finds itself in a much more precarious fiscal position than Cayman with massive government debt, has found a way to pay every unemployed person, regardless of whether they are Bermudian or expat, US$2,000 each month. We are not calling on the government to simply copy what Bermuda has done. But it should give pause for thought that governments around the world, who cannot be suspected of having developed socialist instincts, like the UK or the US, are now resorting to direct welfare interventions that seemed unthinkable only a few months ago. So far, the Cayman Islands government has batted away suggestions that it should follow suit, with the claim that it is simply unaffordable. A back-of-the-envelope calculation tells us it would cost $90 million to pay 5,000 people $1,500 a month for a year. Not cheap, but not out of reach for a country with a gold-star credit rating and one of the lowest public debt ratios in the developed world. Loss of revenue from work permits and tourist taxes may yet take a sledgehammer to government’s finances, but the successes of the last seven years mean Cayman is in a stronger position to help its people than most other countries. While direct benefits of this kind should be an emergency measure for a limited time only, it is clear Cayman’s welfare system as a whole needs a rethink. Some commentators see the COVID-19 crisis as a kind of portal to another world – a chance to evaluate the direction of our countries and re-examine plans for the future. Cayman did not need a global pandemic to know that its social welfare support system is in urgent need of reform. Five years ago, the auditor general released a report that looked into Cayman’s social- assistance programmes. The audit found no overall strategy, no objectives, no priorities, no coordination and, ultimately, no accountability for how $50 million were spent that year. As then-Auditor General Alistair Swarbrick wrote: “Government has not taken the necessary steps over the years to ensure it is providing assistance in the right amount to the right people at the right time, and thus [is] ultimately failing the people they are supposed to serve.” The current crisis shows little has changed structurally since 2015. Taxi drivers and tour operators may receive some ad hoc support. Others are told to raid their pension savings. Cayman needs a social assistance programme that leaves no ambiguities as to who deserves aid and under which circumstances, with a coherent structure that supports Caymanians when they need it most. Like right now. 1234567 89 101112 13 1415 16 171819 20 212223 2425 1234567 89 101112 13 1415 16 171819 20 212223 2425 ACROSS 1 A complete failure (7) 5 Steep rockface (5) 8 Cleansing agent (9) 9 Play on words (3) 10 Pull with effort (4) 12 Enthusiastic loyalty (8) 14 South African city (6) 15 Abrasion (6) 17 Persuade with flattery (4-4) 18 Fervour (4) 21 The whole amount (3) 22 Confess everything (4,5) 24 Clever trick (5) 25 Self-reproach (7) DOWN 1 Side-to-side extent (5) 2 Unchanging (3) 3 Terrifying person (4) 4 Wobble (6) 5 Count for nothing (3,2,3) 6 Behind closed doors (2,7) 7 Supply capital for (7) 11 Calm (9) 13 Wholesale slaughter (8) 14 To shed (7) 16 Strike repeatedly (6) 19 Thrust with sword (5) 20 Fraudulent scheme (4) 23 Be mistaken (3) The Compass Crossword Puzzle The Compass universal kakuro Puzzle 16373 The numbers in the black cells are clues. Numbers above the slash are across clues. Number below the slash are down clues. The goal is to enter digits 1 - 9 in the white cells to add up to the number clues. You cannot enter any digit more than once when adding up to clue. TODAY'S SOLUTIONS Puzzle 16373 ACROSS: 1 Washout, 5 Cliff, 8 Detergent, 9 Pun, 10 Haul, 12 Devotion, 14 Durban, 15 Scrape, 17 Soft-soap, 18 Zeal, 21 All, 22 Come clean, 24 Dodge, 25 Remorse. DOWN: 1 Width, 2 Set, 3 Ogre, 4 Teeter, 5 Cut no ice, 6 In private, 7 Finance, 11 Unruffled, 13 Massacre, 14 Discard, 16 Hammer, 19 Lunge, 20 Scam, 23 Err. A completely deserted Seven Mile Beach is indicative of the collapse of Cayman's tourism industry during the COVID-19 crisis. Cayman needs coherent social assistance programme cartoon Jake Fuller EDITORIAL 4Beyond prestige and financial support for both high school and university students, the Dart Scholarship provides young Caymanians with life-changing experience in the real world of industry. If you’re a high achieving Caymanian student with aspirations to be a future leader and innovator, we invite you to apply for the 2020 programme. dartscholar.ky A whole new world of possibilities. It begins with a simple application. EXTENDED DEADLINE The Dart High School Scholarship Submit your application by 15 May 2020 The William A. Dart University Scholarship Submit your application by 15 May 2020 cayman compass 5 FRIDAY, 8 MAY 2020CONTACT DPMS FOR MORE INFO ABOUT SANITIZING SERVICES: 345.925.9887 • INFO@DPMS.KY • WWW.DAVENPORTPROPERTYSERVICES.KY NOW OFFERING SANITIZING FOGGING FOR YOUR BUSINESS PREMISES OR HOME 345.925.9887 • INFO@DPMS.KY • WWW.DAVENPORTSERVCIES.KY Almost every business has a great interest in maintaining healthy environments for their staff during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, more than ever, it is beneficial and important to use the fogging process to sanitize your office building, home, food preparation areas and public areas. Disinfecting your property is a vital way to limit the spread of infections. THE BENEFITS OF USING DPMS SERVICES & PROFESSIONALS: •All our staff are fully trained to use numerous types of fogging equipment. •DPMS only use EPA approved environmentally friendly sanitizing chemicals that are known to kill the Covid-19 virus. •As members of BSCAI and ISSA, we are kept updated and informed of the latest technology to keeping buildings sanitized. •We offer a daily, weekly or monthly cleaning service to ensure that you have the peace of mind about your environment to suit your requirements. THE TIME TO GET SANITIZED IS NOW! Let DPMS help you make and keep the air you breathe clean and the objects you touch-free from viruses and germs. PROPERTY MANAGEMENT & SERVICES LTD. KAYLA YOUNG kyoung@compassmedia.ky A two-day hearing before Court of Appeal judges over plans for a referendum on the proposed cruise port concluded on Thursday. The Cabinet of the Cayman Islands and the Legislative Assembly appealed a February Grand Court ruling that a framework law – rather than the ‘bespoke’ legislation established for the port vote – is required under the Constitution. In his opening arguments on Wednesday, attorney Alan Maclean, QC, rejected the Grand Court’s ruling, arguing that section 70 of the Constitution does not specify that a general law governing referendums must first be established, adding Justice Timothy Owen was wrong in his rejection of tailored legislation. “The court must be vigilant not to trespass on the legislature’s territory,” Maclean said. By seeking to compel the best guarantee for a fair election, Owen went beyond the minimum legal requirement, he contended. “The judge asked himself the wrong question,” Maclean said, “and ended up in the wrong place.” He rejected Owen’s “gold-plated solution” as a misguided interpretation of section 70, arguing that the law does not exclude the possibility of case-by-case referendum legislation. “There is no international consensus on what is required to make a vote fair and effective,” he said, arguing that fair voting can come in many forms and that it is up to the legislature to determine the procedures. “Don’t chuck out one way of skinning the cat completely,” he said. Justice John Goldring questioned Maclean on what constitutes a fair election. “Would anything go, provided you can vote and you can get there [to vote]?” Goldring asked. Maclean responded, “Pretty much, yes.” There is no set recipe to bake a “compliant referendum cake”, he said. On Thursday, the legal team representing Cruise Port Referendum Cayman outlined its case against the Port Referendum Law and government’s approach to the people- initiated referendum. Attorney Chris Buttler, speaking on behalf of Shirley Roulstone of CPR and the National Trust for the Cayman Islands, objected to the Port Referendum Law’s handling of voter registration, campaign financing and provision of objective information. The lack of a standing referendum law prevented potential voters from understanding the election procedures and inhibited voter registration, Buttler argued via Zoom video. He said the passage of the Port Referendum Law in October 2019 and government’s setting of the vote for December 2019 did not provide sufficient time for voter registration and did not meet the standards set out in the Elections Law. Incorporation by government of the cargo port into the final referendum question also went against the petitioners’ original objective to vote on a cruise berthing facility, rather than cruise and cargo. The lack of campaign-finance provisions or rules on political broadcasting further prejudiced the referendum in favour of government’s stance on the issue, Buttler said. “A general law provides a structural safeguard and may have provided for a more neutral approach to campaign financing, political broadcasting and provision of objective information,” he said. He also maintained the omission of campaign-finance rules in the Port Referendum Law was a policy choice aimed at promoting government’s agenda to build a cruise berthing facility. “The practical effect of formulating the rules so as to assist the government’s campaign is that government was able to outspend the petitioners by a figure of six to one,” he said. Buttler also objected to the content of government’s campaign material, contending that misleading points were promoted as factual to the general public. While one government brochure said the goal was to establish 10 times the amount of coral as that removed by dredging, Buttler said the reality was that less than 3% of the coral impacted was planned for relocation. The publicly viewable livestream of the case cut out during much of Maclean’s response on Thursday. The case was being livestreamed because of COVID-19 suppression measures governing public gatherings and social distancing. Proceedings later resumed over a custom Zoom link provided to participants and the press. In his final points, Maclean argued that it made little sense to restrict the referendum to exclusively the cruise issue, as Buttler had suggested, given the project’s dual role as a cruise and cargo facility. “They have marched in step together since 2015,” he said, adding that it was only logical for government to campaign in defence of the project, when it had been such an important election issue. Regarding the coral debate, he said that issue should be left to the public to evaluate. He defended the goal of utilising microfragmentation to produce 10 times the amount of coral as that lost to dredging. “We don’t accept that there’s some misleading element in this document or that this position on coral is as explained,” he said. For more on the hearing, visit caymancompass.com. Port referendum revisited as court hears gov't appeal An architect's impression of how the proposed port could look. 6NORMA CONNOLLY nconnolly@compassmedia.ky Marie-Michelle Larouche wasn’t expecting she would be giving birth in the Cayman Islands when she, her husband and two children set sail from Montreal, Canada in September 2018. Larouche, who is now 36 weeks pregnant, and her family – husband Philip Kelly, son Alexis, 8, who is home-schooled, and daughter Rosie, 2 – have been living on board their 31-foot sailboat Ohana in Governor’s Harbour in Grand Cayman since mid-March. They had only planned to be Cayman for a day or two, but as the borders of places they had intended to sail on to started closing in response to COVID-19, and it seemed likely they might get stuck at sea with no welcome ports in the region, their travel plans changed drastically. The family’s sailing adventure began when the Ohana, captained by Kelly, travelled down the east coast of the United States, taking three months to get to Miami, stopping at various ports along the way, such as New York, Annapolis, Norfolk and Daytona Beach, before arriving in Fort Lauderdale. They then sailed to Bimini, Bahamas, where they stayed for three months, and then on to the Dominican Republic. They left their boat there from May 2019 until November 2019 while they returned to Canada to work to earn money to continue sailing through the Caribbean Sea. They returned to their boat on 1 Dec. last year. Their plan was to sail to Cuba, Cayman, Belize and Guatemala. “We were supposed to leave our boat in Guatemala and come back to Canada for the delivery of the baby,” Larouche said. “We had our plane tickets from Guatemala to Montreal for mid-April. I would’ve been 31 weeks pregnant and I still would have been able to fly back home.” They arrived in Cayman from Cuba on 12 March after sailing for 24 hours. “Our plan was to stay here only a day or two in order to rest before another four-day passage to Belize,” she said. “We had been hearing of the coronavirus and following the news; however, we had no idea that the virus could change our travelling plans,” said Larouche. “When we arrived in the Cayman Islands, everything in the Caribbean changed very quickly. We were starting to hear rumours that countries were closing theirs borders and that airports were also closing.” At this point, the Cayman Islands government had already started to refuse entry to some cruise ships. The actual ban on the cruise ships came into effect on 14 March, but even before that restriction became official, Cayman had already turned away three ships. “One by one, all countries around us started to close their borders,” Larouche said. “We had to make a decision fast. “Guatemala had not yet closed their borders. However, if we were to leave for Guatemala, there were many things that could change during the five days it would take us to get there. What would happen if they didn’t let us in the country? Could we come back to Cayman? Would they accept us in another country?” She said she had already heard many stories of boaters being stuck at sea because they could not find a country to accept them, so “we decided we did not want to take a chance to leave [Cayman]”. “Also, being 29 weeks pregnant and having kids on board, we couldn’t take the chance to be stuck out at sea,” she said. “In March, we had no clue this crisis would last this long,” she added. Soon after they made their decision to stay, Cayman announced it would be closing its airports to international flights on 22 March, giving people a few days’ notice if they wanted to leave. This left the family with another tough decision to make. “We had two days to decide if we would get on the last plane to Canada,” said Larouche. But that decision was not as simple as just buying a plane ticket. “Unfortunately, we had nowhere to leave the boat here,” she said. “All the marinas were closed and not accepting new clients because of all the restrictions, so it was impossible to leave the boat here. “Also, we had a feeling it was not safe to be travelling through airports where it seemed that the virus was speeding like crazy. Again, we took the decision to stay here on the boat where we felt very safe.” Having been on their sailboat now for more than a year, it is their home, she said. “Living on a boat almost feels like a quarantine anyways, as we are in a small place; we need to think of our provisions, we sometimes stay on the boat for several days. So, we thought that our family and the baby to come would be very safe here on the boat in the islands.” As time went by, though, they realised that borders and airports would not be opening up anytime soon and came to terms with the fact that their baby would be delivered in the Cayman Islands. And that’s when they encountered their next obstacles – all the baby stores were closed so they couldn’t prepare for the arrival of their expected newborn. Also, their travel insurance does not cover childbirth costs. Larouche reached out to the community in Cayman for assistance, sharing her tale with the Facebook group, The Real Women of Cayman. “The responses were amazing,” Larouche said. “We received lots of donations of clothing and baby stuff from many moms on the island. We couldn’t believe how the women of Cayman decided to welcome us in their community. “Delivering a baby in your [own] country can be stressful, so having to deliver a baby here is a little overwhelming. However, with the help of the community here and with the help of other boaters here, we have managed to prepare for most of it.” Their biggest concern, she said, was the payment for the delivery. They were preparing “to pay between 6,000 to 8,000 Canadian dollars (CI$3,560 and $4,750)”, she said. “However, again with the help of the community here, we were referred to one of the best OB/GYNs on the island, who agreed to help us for the financial side of the delivery.” However, the family had budgeted to spend time in countries where the cost of living is much cheaper than in Cayman, so finances continue to be a worry. Their experience with CaymanKind is not something that many of their friends travelling by boat, who are stuck in other countries, have seen. Larouche said many are struggling to get food, water and supplies, and are also having difficulties going on shore. “We are lucky as it’s very easy to provision here in Cayman and we are not missing anything,” she said. On Monday, because the birth of their baby is fast approaching, the family moved their boat to the marina at the Cayman Islands Yacht Club, after being given special authorisation from the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service and the yacht club to move the Ohana to a dock. “For now,” Larouche said, “we still feel safe and comfortable and we are preparing for the arrival of our little baby girl.” Family hunker down on boat awaiting baby’s birth “We had been hearing of the coronavirus and following the news; however, we had no idea that the virus could change our travelling plans.” Marie-Michelle Larouche 13 The total number of months the family have lived on board their sailboat Parents Philip Kelly and Marie-Michelle Larouche, with their 2-year-old daughter Rosie and 8-year-old son Alexis on board their sailboat Ohana at the Cayman Islands Yacht Club dock on Wednesday. The Ohana set sail from Canada in September 2018. See video at caymancompass.com. 7Part 1 - The Swab I had seen the videos. People screaming, sneezing or collaps- ing in fits of laughter as the swab probed uncomfortably far up the nasal cavity. “It was like being stabbed in the brain,” according to one social media account I probably shouldn’t have read. I was prepared for an experience that would be at best uncomfortable and at worst akin to a pre-frontal lobotomy. Booking a slot, at least, was relatively painless. I put in a call to the CTMH Doctors Hospital Care Centre on Friday and by 10am Monday I was rolling up to the drive-through testing lane. I came to a stop in front of a barricade beyond which a trio of medics waited in the shade of a tented canopy. After what seemed like an improbably swift set of introductions through the car window, the notorious swab was being withdrawn from its sterile scabbard. It resembled an elongated lollipop stick. The kind you tell kids not to put up their noses. “Lean back and take a few deep breaths,” the nurse, Kadian Atkinson, advised – perhaps detecting a hint of cowardice. With the procedure being captured on video, it was important, for the sake of self-respect, if not for viewer entertainment, that I stayed cool. I gripped the steering wheel, perhaps a little tighter than was necessary, and tried not to watch as the surgically gloved hand advanced towards my right nostril. It tickled just a little at first and I was tempted to sneeze. Still, it was difficult to see what all the fuss was about. But the swab just kept on going, journeying beyond the point where the distinction between nose and whatever lies beyond was particularly clear. I opened my eyes for a second and wondered if Nurse Atkinson was smiling. Was there, perhaps, a sadistic pleasure to be had in watching me squirm? Behind the surgical mask and motorcycle-style visor, it was hard to tell. Just as the urge to laugh or sneeze or squeal began to feel uncontrollable, the pressure eased and the swab began its retreat. I breathed out one more time and it was done. The nurse dispatched the sample into a test tube, filled with a chemical solution that would immediately inactivate the virus, if it were present. That five-second journey from nose to test tube is perhaps the most dangerous for the medics involved. Now that she was no longer probing the deepest recesses of my nasal cavity, I was clear-eyed enough to see Nurse Atkinson and her colleague, nurse Jasmine Minott, in their proper light – committed professionals putting themselves in harm’s way to keep the community safe. For most of us, encountering someone with coronavirus is something we are taking exceptional measures to avoid. For these guys, it is an occupational necessity. My part in the process was over and it had taken less than 10 minutes from start to finish. I have waited longer for a cheeseburger. Critically, I hadn’t made a fool of myself on a national broadcast. The more important test was yet to come: Did I have the coronavirus or just a mild case of man-flu? Part 2: The lab techs get to work My role may have been over, but my DNA sample was just beginning its journey. Things were about to get complicated. The test tube, labelled with a barcode linking to the identification information diligently triple-checked by clinical analyst Rico Ponton at the drive- through, was placed in cold storage with the rest of the day’s samples. That’s a fancy way of saying they put it in a cooler. Within half an hour, two gowned and masked medics arrived to collect the morning’s samples. It’s a short walk to the sterile facility that has been converted, in a matter of weeks, into a molecular laboratory capable of testing for COVID-19. On a thick glass sliding door inside the lab, a printed sign warns ‘Stop - Bio-Hazardous and Infectious Materials’. On the other side of the glass is lab manager Gayon Allen- Goulbourne. This is where the magic happens or, as I am quickly corrected, this is where the science happens. It is her job to take the sample and extract a workable specimen containing human DNA and, if it is present, the RNA that carries the signature code of the coronavirus. Allen-Goulbourne’s life has changed dramatically in the past six weeks. Her skills as a laboratory technician have propelled her into the middle of a global health crisis. The work that she along with her counterparts at the Health Services Authority do in these labs will help determine the prevalence of the virus throughout the country and dictate if and when the economy can reopen. It is a tremendous responsibility and one she takes great pride in shouldering. She gets emotional when she talks about her 3-year-old and her 1-year-old at home and how her husband Hilzan is caring for them while juggling his own work as an IT consultant. But when there is a job to be done, she is 100% focussed. The swab arrives in her lab in a test tube, bathed in solution – the virus-inactivating chemical that has made it safe to handle. Using a pipette, she extracts the liquid and transfers it to another plastic tube, with a special filter attached. My sample slots along with 23 others, all carefully labelled and placed into a centrifuge. The spinning process removes the liquids, leaving a workable sample of DNA and RNA – the two types of nucleic acid found in human and viral cells. Now it is ready to be tested. Part 3: Analysing the sample Some time later, on the other side of the sliding glass door, green and blue lines spiral across an evolving digital graph on a computer monitor. “No red. That’s good,” explains Dr. Frank Koentgen as he watches the lines slowly curve upwards. The green lines correspond to human DNA. Blue is for the coronavirus control samples, pre-loaded into the test. Red would indicate the presence of the virus in one of the samples currently being run through a Polymerase Chain Reaction machine. The machine, despite the critical role it plays in the fight against a global pandemic, is not especially impressive to look at. It is a small boxy contraption, the uniform beige of an office printer. The comparison is apt because it is basically a molecular photocopier. Its core job is to amplify DNA strands, present in the samples, to the point where they show up on Koentgen’s graph. Along with the genetic samples, substances that cause chain reactions have been loaded into the machine. “Those are the chemicals and enzymes that multiply the DNA samples and the RNA of the virus From nasal swab to national statistic in five hours The story of one COVID-19 test: Over the next few weeks, thousands of Cayman Islands residents will be tested for the coronavirus. In an effort to demystify the process and set his own mind at ease about a lingering cough, Cayman Compass journalist James Whittaker got swabbed for COVID-19. In a special feature today, we follow the progress of his sample, from its uncomfortable extraction to the moment the results arrive in his email inbox. In between times, the scientists, doctors and lab techs talk us through the sophisticated process of determining who has the virus and who doesn’t. Clinical analyst Rico Ponton checks James Whittaker's ID at the drive- through. Dr. Frank Koentgen displays the flight of vials which gets loaded with samples to be tested in the PCR machine. 8 All the samples are carefully labelled and bar-coded before they get to the lab.(which is converted to DNA in the same process) if it is present, and illuminate it,” Koentgen explained. For now, the signs are good. But on its current setting, it is a 90-minute process and there is still plenty of time for the COVID- seeking fluorescent probes to hit their mark. By way of demonstration, he produces a print-out of a positive result. A thick line, the pinkish-red of watery blood, spikes through the gentle green parabolas that dominate the graph. “If we see red, we know we have COVID,” he says. Part 4: The backstory The fact that Koentgen is here at all, watching the genetic code from the back of my nose expressed as coloured lines on a graph, is a small miracle in itself. An entrepreneur and renowned biotech scientist, he made his name as the co-founder of Ozgene, an Australian company that produces genetically modified mice for drug validation and medical research trials. Some time ago, Koentgen, who is a dual German and Australian citizen, established a new company in Cayman’s Enterprise City, focussing on global research services. He met Dr. Yaron Rado, the chairman of Doctors Hospital, over a glass of wine – a commonplace encounter in a small place like Cayman, before the coronavirus made such pleasantries impossible. As fellow Germans in the medical field, they found they had much in common. Just a week before Cayman’s first coronavirus case, Rado was readying the hospital for an anticipated outbreak. “I got a WhatsApp from Frank saying I am coming from Perth on Friday, should I bring a COVID tester?” Rado told me in an interview immediately after I had been swabbed. He added, “I didn’t know at the time what this entailed, but I knew that testing was going to be the determining factor in how the country came through this, so I said, ‘Sure, let’s do it.’” Watching cars slowly roll up to the medical tent, Rado reflected that the process looks smooth and simple. Patients (though that is not exactly the right word as the vast majority are essential workers getting screening tests) roll up, flash their ID, squirm for a moment as they get swabbed, then drive away. A few minutes pass and the next car arrives, and the process repeats itself. Establishing that system was a huge logistical challenge. Rado credits Joanne Deys, president of Ozgene LLC USA, who arrived with Koentgen to help set up the lab, as the brains behind the operation. “It is like an industrial machine line. We had to look at the whole process from data entry in the care centre to the automatic email you are going to get with your result.” Part 5: The waiting game It is the few hours between swab and email that is perhaps the most tense for those of us who have passed through the drive- through. Most will find out they don’t have the virus and they can breathe a little easier as they go about their daily lives. An unfortunate few, including some with mild or no symptoms, will be told they do have COVID-19 and they must go into isolation. With that will come the awkward process of retracing every step, confessing to any breaches of the regulations as they assist public health teams in tracing every interaction over the past days and weeks. There will be inevitable trepidation over the possible onset of symptoms or, perhaps worse, the guilty premonition that you may have passed on the virus to someone less able to withstand its effects. I felt a pre-sentiment of those emotions as I left Koentgen waiting for the final read-out from his PCR machine. Faces from the past few weeks passed through my mind – the elderly lady who stopped to pet my dog, the overweight man who squeezed past me in the supermarket, the pedestrians and joggers I passed as I huffed out deep breaths of exertion on a rare morning bike ride. If I did have COVID-19, any of them might have it, too. Part 6: The result Thankfully, I didn’t have to wonder for too long. I had been home for just a few minutes, preparing to watch the government’s daily press conference, when an email pinged in my inbox with a pdf attachment declaring me officially negative for COVID-19. Around an hour or so later, I was jotting down notes from the briefing, when Dr. John Lee announced an addition to the numbers he had given earlier – a batch of 24 new results, all negative – had come in from Doctors Hospital. It had taken a little over five hours from swab to being an official statistic on national television. In truth, I never really expected I had the coronavirus, but it was a relief to know for sure. As thousands of Cayman’s residents go through the process over the next few weeks, I wish them the same good fortune in the hope that we can come through this crisis, and something close to life as we knew it can resume. A positive test, like this one from an earlier sample, would show as a red spike on the graph. Green is for human DNA and blue is for the ‘control’ samples of COVID-19 pre-loaded into the test. Lab manager Gayon Allen- Gouldbourne processes the sample to isolate the genetic material for testing. Journalist James Whittaker gets his swab taken. 9Next >