Three weeks af­ter a State of Emer­gency went in­to ef­fect to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus in T&T, a week­end cur­few is set to go in­to ef­fect to­day from 7 pm to 5 am for the month of June.

Cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing un­der a cur­few from 9 pm to 5 am, which went in­to ef­fect on May 15, cit­i­zens have al­so been warned that day­time hours are not an ex­cuse to gath­er to par­ty be­cause there is no cur­few in place.

In an­nounc­ing a tight­en­ing of the hours fur­ther de­signed to cur­tail the move­ment of cit­i­zens on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urged peo­ple to put the brakes on week­end par­ties and limes.

Com­mend­ing the cit­i­zen­ry for ad­her­ing to the reg­u­la­tions and tight­ened hol­i­day cur­few dur­ing the last week, Row­ley said it was time to do a lit­tle bit more.

"You did be­have very well I must say, in the last two hol­i­days,” he said at a COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

Last Tues­day, the coun­try cel­e­brat­ed In­di­an Ar­rival Day and on Thurs­day Cor­pus Christi.

Ad­mit­ting he did not want to lose the strides made on flat­ten­ing the cur­rent curve thus far, Row­ley said, "Come Fri­day evening, I would not like this sit­u­a­tion to change."

He urged cit­i­zens to be aware of the new week­end cur­few hours, ad­vis­ing, "Please do not come out to con­gre­gate. Come out for emer­gen­cies and es­sen­tials on­ly."

Point­ing out that Gov­ern­ment's new mantra was to vac­ci­nate and op­er­ate, Row­ley said the move was aimed at elim­i­nat­ing gath­er­ings, a trend which was still be­ing no­ticed de­spite the ex­tra lock­down mea­sures tak­en in re­cent weeks.

Asked what prompt­ed the need for tighter re­stric­tions and where ex­act­ly the spikes in new in­fec­tions had been record­ed dur­ing the past two weeks, epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Av­ery Hinds said in­fec­tions con­tin­ued to pop up every­where.

He said the "re­moval" of two hours from an in­di­vid­ual's day may not sound like much but in ac­tu­al­i­ty, it could ac­count for a cru­cial re­duc­tion in the vi­ral spread.

Mean­while, asked if spikes with­in homes were re­spon­si­ble for many of the new in­fec­tions be­ing record­ed, Hinds ad­mit­ted it was a con­trib­u­tor, as close con­tact in terms of stag­ger­ing bath­room times and use of oth­er ameni­ties was dif­fi­cult in some house­holds.

A CAL aircraft descends at the Piarco International Airport recently.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Bor­ders to be re­opened in 4-6 weeks

Fif­teen months af­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go shut its bor­ders to the rest of the world, plans are be­ing made to re­open it with­in a cou­ple of weeks.

While no con­crete de­ci­sions have as yet been tak­en, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said a meet­ing will be held on Tues­day with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Health and Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) "be­cause it is the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion that with­in the next four to six weeks, we will do away with the bor­der clo­sure arrange­ment and the ex­emp­tion sys­tem be­cause as we vac­ci­nate...and as vac­ci­na­tion has been ac­cel­er­at­ed in North Amer­i­ca in par­tic­u­lar, the sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent now.

"The pop­u­la­tions of North Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean can now more eas­i­ly mix and we are bet­ter able to man­age peo­ple com­ing in­to the coun­try,” Row­ley said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 up­date.

In­di­cat­ing that ar­riv­ing pas­sen­gers will have to meet the stip­u­lat­ed cri­te­ria, which in­cludes whether they are vac­ci­nat­ed or not—the de­tails of which will be re­vealed next week—Row­ley said, "There will be con­trols and there will be cat­e­gori­sa­tion of con­di­tions."

Sev­er­al hun­dred T&T na­tion­als are still await­ing per­mis­sion to re-en­ter the coun­try af­ter months of be­ing stuck abroad.