At­tor­ney Om Lal­la be­lieves that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s vi­brant democ­ra­cy will pre­vent any abuse of pow­er un­der the new State of Emer­gency that has just come in­to ef­fect.

This is the last line of de­fence by the Gov­ern­ment as it at­tempts to sti­fle the surg­ing COVID-19 num­bers and deaths in the hope it will give the over­bur­dened health care sys­tem some much-need­ed breath­ing room.

The med­ical teams han­dling the sev­en fa­cil­i­ties have been warn­ing about this for the past month, con­cerned that there would be no bed space for COVID-19 pos­i­tive and ill pa­tients.

Busi­ness­es across the coun­try are sup­port­ing the State of Emer­gency, which came in­to ef­fect at mid­night Sat­ur­day night.

As T&T record­ed 520 COVID-19 in­fec­tions and 11 more deaths on Sat­ur­day, peo­ple across south Trinidad wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment's im­po­si­tion of a State of Emer­gency.

Leg­endary WI crick­et Bri­an Lara re­lat­ed the meet­ing he had with two close friends in the wee hours of the fi­nal day of the Third Test match against Aus­tralia at the Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos on March 30, 1999, that helped pro­pel the West In­dies to an ex­cit­ing vic­to­ry as he us­es the his­toric win to in­spire the con­cert­ed fight against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade was cor­doned off on Sat­ur­day as a re­sult of peo­ple flout­ing the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions. This was re­vealed by Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez who al­so said that the co­conut ven­dors around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah are like­ly to be closed down al­so.

Aman­da Choo Quan, win­ner of the 2020 John­son and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writ­ers Prize (JAACWP) says a com­pre­hen­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tions cam­paign should be in­te­gral in the Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts in get­ting across its COVID-19 mes­sages to cit­i­zens. She has called for a more col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach from Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion to bat­tle the pan­dem­ic.

As the coun­try’s COVID-19 out­look hit a record high in terms of new cas­es per 24-hour pe­ri­od, at 402 and sev­en ad­di­tion­al deaths, which pushed the tal­ly to 203 over­all, fears con­tin­ue to cir­cu­late that the na­tion’s hos­pi­tals are be­ing over­whelmed.

The world cel­e­brat­ed World Im­mu­niza­tion Week (April 24-30), for which the theme this year is #Vac­cinesWork­forAll fo­cus­ing on how vac­cines–and the peo­ple who de­vel­op, de­liv­er and re­ceive them–are he­roes by work­ing to pro­tect the health of every­one, every­where.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley oin Sat­ur­day as­sured that he would not shut down street vend­ing de­spite con­cerns that the huge crowds gath­ered to pur­chase food could fu­el more pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es.

If the num­bers of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ue, the par­al­lel health care sys­tem could run out of beds by month end.