Last Fri­day, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden an­nounced new trav­el rules for all for­eign­ers en­ter­ing the Unit­ed States. In a bid to slow the spread of the Omi­cron vari­ant, trav­ellers now have to take a pre-de­par­ture COVID-19 test no more than one day be­fore trav­el. Pre­vi­ous­ly, trav­ellers had to take a test three days be­fore trav­el. If you’re trav­el­ling in the weeks ahead, here’s what you need to know. 

Over­shad­owed by the worst spike in COVID-19 cas­es since the start of the pan­dem­ic, vot­ing takes place to­mor­row for the sec­ond time this year to elect a new To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day praised two women who sur­vived bouts of COVID-19 for giv­ing their sto­ries to Guardian Me­dia and the me­dia house for re­port­ing re­spon­si­bly on the is­sue.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob is warn­ing those who wish to de­lib­er­ate­ly vi­o­late the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will en­force the law.

The dai­ly num­ber in­fec­tions from COVID-19 have come per­ilous­ly close to one thou­sand, as the Min­istry of Health record­ed some 984 new pos­i­tive cas­es to­day, Fri­day 3 De­cem­ber 2021.

The eco­nom­ic growth pre­dict­ed in 2022 from the pe­tro­le­um sec­tor should be in­vest­ed in sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, ac­cord­ing to Richie Sookhai, Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC). 

Hav­ing sur­vived COVID-19, for­mer med­ical di­rec­tor at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon has been treat­ing COVID-19 pa­tients at home, ad­min­is­ter­ing drugs, in­tra­venous flu­ids, oxy­gen ther­a­py and even con­vinc­ing rel­a­tives to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

The head of the African Union’s health watch­dog urges mod­er­a­tion in the world’s re­ac­tion to the new coro­n­avirus vari­ant.

MANI­LA, Philip­pines (AP) — Mea­sures used to counter the delta vari­ant should re­main the foun­da­tion for fight­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, even in the face of the new omi­cron ver­sion of the virus, World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion of­fi­cials said Fri­day, while ac­knowl­edg­ing that the trav­el re­stric­tions im­posed by some coun­tries may buy time.

■ The is­land has a strong home­grown biotech­nol­o­gy in­dus­try and is ex­port­ing vac­cines to oth­er de­vel­op­ing na­tions ■

The Unit­ed States will now re­quire all in­bound trav­ellers, re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty or vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus, to pro­vide a neg­a­tive COVID-19 test re­sult tak­en one day pri­or to trav­el. Ac­cord­ing to the CDC, the one-day pe­ri­od is one day be­fore the flight’s de­par­ture and not 24 hours be­fore. For ex­am­ple, if your flight is at 3 pm on a Sat­ur­day, you could board with a neg­a­tive test tak­en any time the Fri­day be­fore. The pol­i­cy comes in­to ef­fect on De­cem­ber 6th at 12:01 am EST.   

■ The Unit­ed Na­tions’ Food Price In­dex climbed for a fourth straight month in No­vem­ber to its high­est lev­el since June 2011 ■