Af­ter a sit­ting which spanned more than six hours, the Pub­lic Health (Amend­ment) Bill, 2020 was passed with­out amend­ments in the Up­per House on Sat­ur­day.

If you have the COVID-19 virus but can­not quar­an­tine your­self at home be­cause you do not have the room to do so, you can con­tact the Min­istry of Health for as­sis­tance.

Work­ers, in­clud­ing the se­cu­ri­ty staff, em­ployed the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) have been ad­vised to take what­ev­er means nec­es­sary with­in the law to pro­tect them­selves from be­ing ex­posed to COVID-19 in the work­place.

This was the re­ac­tion from one of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 T&T na­tion­als strand­ed abroad since this coun­try’s bor­ders closed on March 22. The cit­i­zen was re­spond­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's plans to meet with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry this week to dis­cuss the repa­tri­a­tion of cit­i­zens. He was speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Sat­ur­day.

Num­ber of sam­ples sub­mit­ted to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), the UWI and oth­er lo­cal sites for test­ing for COVID-19 23,429

The Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has re­vealed that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic stim­u­lat­ed a mas­sive ac­cel­er­a­tion in dig­i­tal adop­tion through­out the re­gion.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­nounced that from Mon­day it will be il­le­gal for cit­i­zens to step in­to pub­lic with­out a mask. He said the Gov­ern­ment has dis­trib­uted a large num­ber of masks and many busi­ness­es are al­so sell­ing them and so masks will be­come “part of your cloth­ing now.”

How­ev­er, they rec­om­mend­ed caveats to pro­tect those who have le­git­i­mate med­ical rea­sons for be­ing un­able to wear masks, or who are en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties which do not fa­cil­i­tate wear­ing masks.

Re­silient, self­less, brave–ar­guably at­trib­ut­es typ­i­cal­ly giv­en to a woman, es­pe­cial­ly a moth­er. Lit­tle sur­prise then that when faced with the predica­ment of be­ing preg­nant dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, ex­pec­tant moth­ers and med­ical doc­tors, Emi­ly and Chris­tine (not their re­al names) are “wom­an­ing up.”

The Min­istry of Health pro­vides the fol­low­ing clin­i­cal up­date as of the morn­ing of Sat­ur­day 29th Au­gust, 2020:

The Min­istry of Health has an­nounced two more deaths, in ad­di­tion to the two an­nounced this morn­ing.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP), Gary Grif­fith, says it is an of­fence un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Reg­u­la­tions for per­sons to swim in the sea dur­ing this COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic.