A HIGH COURT judge has granted permission to the daughter of a covid19 fatality to challenge the ban on open-air pyre cremations.
Justice Avason Quinlan-Williams granted permission to Cindy-Ann Ramsaroop-Persad, whose father, Silochan, 77, died at the Couva Hospital and Multi Training Facility on July 25.
The elder Ramsaroop’s death certificate said his cause of death was covid19 pneumonia, covid19 infection, hypertension and Type II diabetes.
The police initially gave the family a permit for his final rites at the Waterloo Cremation Site, but this was later rescinded.
The family was told it had to be revoked because of the ban on open-air pyre cremations for covid19 deaths. Open-air pyre cremations are allowed for those who did not die of covid19.
Ramsaroop-Persad, who works at a funeral home, got permission to challenge the Commissioner of Police’s decision not to grant the permit. Similar permission to challenge the Minister of Health was denied, since the Attorney General was also named as a defendant to the constitutional-motion aspect of the claim, which also included a judicial review application.
The judge did not grant Ramsaroop-Persad’s application for interim relief to direct the commissioner to issue a cremation permit in 24 hours so the family can have an open-air pyre cremation, as she deemed the matter urgent.
As a result, Ramsaroop’s funeral is on hold until the judge orders otherwise. His body remains at the Dass Funeral Home, where his daughter works.
She is represented by attorneys Anand Ramlogan, SC, Jayanti Lutchmedial, Vishaal Siewsaran, Renuka Rambhajan, Natasha Bisram and Cheyenne Lugo.
Included in Ramsaroop-Persad’s claim was an expert opinion by Dr Farley Cleghorn, a Trinidadian epidemiologist based in Washington, DC, who has provided similar opinions on various infectious diseases, including covid19, on several American television networks.
Cleghorn is also a member of a covid19 advocacy group providing technical assistance to Trinidad and Tobago.
He was asked to give his opinion on the risk of contracting covid19 from someone who died from it, and whether there was any greater risk of contracting the virus from an open-air pyre cremation as opposed to an indoor cremation, provided the body is handled in the way prescribed in the Health Ministry’s guidelines to funeral homes.
Cleghorn was also asked to say if there was any rationale or scientific justification for prohibiting open-air pyre cremations for covid19 deaths, given that the pandemic restrictionson the number of people in attendance remain the same as for any other type of funeral. Funerals are limited to ten people in a public space.
He also provided his opinion on whether covid19 could be transmitted by smoke or the dead person’s ashes.
In his opinion, Cleghorn said after a year and a half of the pandemic, the risks from handling the bodies of covid19 cases after death “are vanishingly low.”
“The viruses in the body rapidly die off after death as they cannot be sustained. This is unlike some oth
