The Bar­keep­ers & Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BOATT) is call­ing for con­sul­ta­tion and di­a­logue with the Gov­ern­ment, to help pre­vent the com­plete de­struc­tion of the food and bev­er­age sec­tors in this coun­try.

Al­most as soon as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the fur­ther eas­ing of COVID-19 re­stric­tions Sat­ur­day, cin­e­ma, gym and casi­no own­ers sprang in­to ac­tion spruc­ing up and prepar­ing their es­tab­lish­ments to open for busi­ness on Mon­day.

The lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health is re­port­ing a fall in the num­ber of ac­tive COVID-19 cas­es over the past 24 hours, notwith­stand­ing con­fir­ma­tion of eight new pos­i­tive tests.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is call­ing on the Row­ley Ad­min­is­tra­tion to be more com­pas­sion­ate in its han­dling of the COVID-19 cri­sis, and to ease up the hard­ship which cit­i­zens are en­dur­ing.

As the Gov­ern­ment gave the green light to re­sume greater eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and an­nounced an eas­ing of re­stric­tions on Sat­ur­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram urged cit­i­zens not to be­come com­pla­cent as they go about their dai­ly busi­ness.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says this coun­try’s COVID-19 sta­tus is “in a pret­ty good po­si­tion.” De­spite the grow­ing num­ber of im­port­ed cas­es, the min­is­ter said the coun­try’s cur­rent stand­ing of “30-50 cas­es per day and a case fa­tal­i­ty rate of one per­son per day,” when com­pared to COVID-19 sta­tis­tics glob­al­ly, T&T is do­ing rel­a­tive­ly well. The min­is­ter made the state­ment dur­ing a COVID-19 up­date press con­fer­ence at the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary Fa­cil­i­ty on Sat­ur­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­nounced ad­just­ments to the COVID-19 re­stric­tions, in­clud­ing a full re­turn of pub­lic ser­vants to work from Mon­day, and the re­open­ing of gyms, places of wor­ship, cin­e­mas and mem­bers’ clubs with some caveats.

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is “dis­ap­point­ed” that the Gov­ern­ment did not ac­cept their rec­om­men­da­tions to re­lax the re­stric­tions on bars and restau­rants. The Cham­ber al­so in­di­cat­ed its will­ing­ness to meet to dis­cuss any ad­di­tion­al mea­sures re­quired to al­le­vi­ate any ap­pre­hen­sions to fa­cil­i­tate re­open­ing.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says they have re­spond­ed to the call by na­tion­als stuck out­side of T&T to re­turn home by in­creas­ing repa­tri­a­tion flights and en­sur­ing state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties are ready for them.

The tourism sec­tors in both Trinidad and To­ba­go are one step clos­er to a safe re­open­ing fol­low­ing the re­cent ac­cred­i­ta­tion of the Pi­ar­co and Crown Point In­ter­na­tion­al Air­ports in the Air­port Health Ac­cred­i­ta­tion (AHA) pro­gramme, by the Air­ports Coun­cil In­ter­na­tion­al (ACI). 

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will be step­ping up its mon­i­tor­ing of those COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients who are be­ing home quar­an­tined.

When Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley faces the coun­try on Sat­ur­day to pro­nounce on cur­rent COVID-19 re­stric­tions, it will be two months be­fore Christ­mas.