Ef­fec­tive Tues­day 26 Jan­u­ary 2021, all pas­sen­gers trav­el­ing in­to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (USA) will be re­quired to present re­sults of a neg­a­tive COVID-19 test in or­der to trav­el.

The Bar­keep­ers & Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BOATT) is urg­ing oth­er stake­hold­ers in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try to fol­low their lead and main­tain open lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the au­thor­i­ties, as the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to work on re­cov­er­ing from the eco­nom­ic im­pact of COVID-19.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram is pre­dict­ing that 2021 will be a much bet­ter year than 2020 be­cause vac­cines will be made avail­able to T&T and oth­er coun­tries world­wide to pro­tect peo­ple from the COVID-19 virus.

Dr Os­afo Fras­er, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health for St George East has said that his of­fice co­or­di­nates the Free­dom Hall Quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine and they are cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing claims that pa­tients there are not be­ing served meals on time among oth­er prob­lems.

Gary Ma­habir, the founder of the “T&T Cit­i­zens Over­seas” What­sApp group, is a Trinida­di­an who has been liv­ing in New Jer­sey, USA, for more than 30 years.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, has is­sued an­oth­er warn­ing to the pub­lic, against breach­ing the COVID-19 Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions, fol­low­ing the tick­et­ing of over 70 pa­trons at a birth­day par­ty in Ch­agua­nas over the week­end.

The Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (NFSD) in the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MDDFS) is chal­leng­ing the na­tion’s men to stop hurt­ing the na­tion’s women, and says it will con­tin­ue its spe­cial­ist pro­grammes tar­get­ing men specif­i­cal­ly, in a bid to re­duce the vi­o­lent at­tacks on women by men.

There has been one more death from COVID-19, bring­ing the na­tion­al toll to 128 per­sons, the Min­istry of Health re­ports in its lat­est up­date.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, has warned against breach­ing the COVID-19 Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Reg­u­la­tions by us­ing vir­tu­al Car­ni­val fetes as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have a mass gath­er­ing.

The lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health is con­firm­ing 14 new pos­i­tive cas­es of COVID-19, one of whom is a re­cent­ly repa­tri­at­ed per­son, and an­oth­er per­son who is from To­ba­go.

While noth­ing is yet set in stone, the Pfiz­er and BioN­tech vac­cine could be the one that is ad­min­is­tered in T&T, ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

The Min­istry of Health is con­firm­ing 10 new pos­i­tive cas­es of COVID-19—with one of them be­ing a pa­tient in To­ba­go—in its lat­est up­date, not­ing that these bring the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es in the coun­try to 325 pa­tients.