With Christ­mas just five days away, the Sun­day Guardian asked some promi­nent peo­ple in T&T how they were go­ing to cel­e­brate Christ­mas amid the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

T&T-born doc­tor Ma­teus Fer­nan­des, who lives and works in the US, was among the his­toric first round of health-care work­ers to be im­mu­nised with Pfiz­er’s COVID-19 vac­cine last Thurs­day.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is re­mind­ing the coun­try that na­tion­al bor­ders have not yet been re­opened by the Gov­ern­ment.

IA­TA (Mi­a­mi) — The In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA), the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA), Air­ports Coun­cil In­ter­na­tion­al Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ACI-LAC) and the Civ­il Air Nav­i­ga­tion Ser­vices Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CAN­SO), are joint­ly reach­ing out to gov­ern­ments in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean to en­sure that em­ploy­ees in the avi­a­tion sec­tor are con­sid­ered as es­sen­tial work­ers dur­ing the im­pend­ing COVID-19 vac­cine cam­paign.

UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res has called for coun­try’s around the world host­ing mi­grants, to en­sure those mi­grants are very much in­volved in any COVID-19 re­sponse and re­cov­ery ef­forts.

The lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health is con­firm­ing 17 new pos­i­tive cas­es of COVID-19, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es in the coun­try to 564 pa­tients.

IDB — To­day, the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) an­nounced that it will mo­bi­lize $1 bil­lion to help Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean coun­tries ac­quire and dis­trib­ute COVID-19 vac­cines.

Both Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young MP and Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Sen­a­tor Dr. Amery Browne, have met with High Com­mis­sion­er of Cana­da to Trinidad and To­ba­go, His Ex­cel­len­cy Ku­mar Gup­ta, con­cern­ing the re­turn of Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als em­ployed on agri­cul­tur­al farms in Cana­da.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is hold­ing out hope that his daugh­ter Dr Sonel Row­ley-Stew­art will be among those na­tion­als who will be al­lowed to re­turn to T&T dur­ing this hol­i­day pe­ri­od.

While there was no eas­ing of re­stric­tions Sat­ur­day as it per­tains to so­cial gath­er­ings or the re­sump­tion of con­tact sports, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to al­low gro­ceries/su­per­mar­kets/goods re­tail­ers to open for a 24-hour pe­ri­od be­gin­ning from De­cem­ber 10 to Jan­u­ary 3.

Three chil­dren are now ward­ed at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty af­ter they con­tract­ed the COVID-19 virus. While they were said to be do­ing well up to Sat­ur­day, health of­fi­cials have ad­mit­ted it is an alarm­ing de­vel­op­ment.

Ner­vous about what the next two weeks will bring in terms of the COVID-19 sta­tis­tics as there is in­creased move­ment be­tween the two is­lands dur­ing this hol­i­day pe­ri­od, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ap­pealed to Trinida­di­ans on va­ca­tion to keep their num­bers small.