Iso­late, quar­an­tine, stay home were the new mantra of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last week as he an­nounced new mea­sures to bat­tle the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19).

The US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain is ad­vis­ing Amer­i­cans liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go who wish to re­turn to the US that it had or­gan­ised a pri­vate char­ter flight sched­uled to de­part Port-of-Spain for Mi­a­mi on April 1 at noon.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says the Stay-at-Home or­der is not meant to cre­ate pan­ic nor con­fine peo­ple to their homes, as was the case with a cur­few dur­ing an SoE. Rather, he says it is meant lim­it­ing one’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right so a greater good can be achieved.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic are now be­ing ad­vised that they can ex­er­cise while the stay-at-home or­der re­mains in ef­fect.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is pre­pared to take ac­tion against any­one who spreads unau­tho­rized in­for­ma­tion.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram on Fri­day con­firmed that the two pa­tients who have so far died from COVID-19 will not be af­ford­ed cer­e­monies at homes or church­es where the body is present and this will be the pro­to­col go­ing for­ward.

Three more peo­ple who were quar­an­tined at Camp Ba­lan­dra, af­ter re­turn­ing to Trinidad from a Caribbean cruise, were trans­port­ed to the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal last night for treat­ment for the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19).

The Min­istry of Health is brac­ing for a rise in the num­ber of pa­tients they will have to test and pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es this week­end. Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh made the com­ment at a press con­fer­ence Friday, as he an­nounced a sec­ond death and re­vealed this week­end would be the coun­try’s tip­ping point in fight­ing this glob­al pan­dem­ic.

To­ba­go’s sec­ond pos­i­tive nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pa­tient does not have any trav­el his­to­ry, a sit­u­a­tion which now his co-work­ers at the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal wary about whether they were ex­posed to the virus.

The pub­lic will still be able to go to the shop, gro­cery and drug store from Mon­day. But if you’re not do­ing that and aren’t among cer­tain es­sen­tial ser­vices which con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing, you’ll have to tell po­lice why you’re out­side and could ul­ti­mate­ly face a $50,000 fine and six months’ jail.

"The Min­istry of Health in­forms the pop­u­la­tion that to­day, Fri­day 27th March, de­spite the best ef­forts of the health care pro­fes­sion­als, a sec­ond na­tion­al of T&T who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 has died," the re­lease said.

From mid­night on Sun­day (March 29) to April 15, cit­i­zens who are clas­si­fied as “non-es­sen­tial” will be re­quired to stay at home. Should civil­ians ig­nore the warn­ing, they will feel the full brunt of the law, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, an­nounc­ing deep­er COVID-19 mea­sures.