KINGSTON, Jamaica — Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Christopher Tufton says the Government intends to enhance its monitoring of individuals under home quarantine with technological devices that can be affixed to the body.

Tufton, who was speaking a press conference a short while ago, said though not yet available, this device is a more secure arrangement than current plans to use the JamCOVID19 smartphone app for monitoring.

“…In time to come we intend to deploy another technology device that would be more secure in terms of affixing it to the individual and if that individual were to move out of a particular space or tamper with the device it will provide a signal to the monitoring infrastructure to respond,” the minister said.

The Government announced the use of the app for the monitoring of people in home quarantine as part of requirements for Jamaican cruise ship workers to disembark the Royal Caribbean Adventure of the Seas cruise ship, which arrived in Trelawny yesterday.

The cruise ship workers will be disembarked in groups of 200 every 48 to 72 hours and after testing, they will be taken to the Bahia Principe Grand Jamaica hotel in St Ann to await test results.

Those who test positive for the virus will be taken to a State quarantine facility and crew members with negative results will be allowed to self-quarantine at home for 14 days from the day they disembark the vessel.

For home quarantine, individuals will be required to consent to have their location geofenced via the JamCOVID19 platform and to do video check-in multiple times daily.

“We will require that individual in keeping with taking personal responsibility to provide periodic updates in terms of temperature checks and so on and we will have to depend on individuals to be faithful to the requirements that will be placed to them as a condition of going home,” Tufton said today.