The Gov­ern­ment will ex­tend the cur­few to the day­time pe­ri­od on the two pub­lic hol­i­days sched­uled this week–In­di­an Ar­rival Day on Mon­day and Cor­pus Christi on Thurs­day–to lim­it move­ment dur­ing the day.

At a me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said while the dai­ly 9 pm to 5 pm cur­few in place with the State of Emer­gency will not be changed, there would be some ad­just­ments for the pub­lic hol­i­days. Move­ment will on­ly be al­lowed for a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od dur­ing the day.

All hard­ware will be closed for the week, ac­cord­ing to the PM. He al­so an­nounced that the sale of pre-pack­aged food pre­pared by restau­rants and fast food busi­ness­es will be banned, as at­tempts are be­ing made to curb the num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es in T&T.

The Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T has an­nounced that on Mon­day and Thurs­day all its mem­bers will be closed to "give our em­ploy­ees time for rest, re­lax­ation and re­flec­tion."

The T&T Cham­ber in a re­lease said it recog­nis­es the need for ad­di­tion­al clar­i­ty, re­stric­tions and ad­just­ed cur­few time on the up­com­ing pub­lic hol­i­days an­nounced by the Prime Min­is­ter to en­sure com­pli­ance by all con­cerned.

“We are at a tip­ping point in deal­ing with the cur­rent pan­dem­ic. It is crit­i­cal that every cit­i­zen un­der­stand that their be­hav­iour plays an in­te­gral role in curb­ing the spread. Let’s each do our part – Be the One to save a life. While we are con­fi­dent that the es­sen­tial busi­ness­es are do­ing their part to keep their em­ploy­ees and con­sumers safe, we im­plore every­one to con­tin­ue to be dili­gent and take the nec­es­sary steps to save lives.”

The Cham­ber al­so said it was sat­is­fied that the Gov­ern­ment has been able to ac­quire more vac­cines.

"We look for­ward to de­tails on the amount of vac­cines ac­quired and the tim­ing of the vac­ci­na­tion roll­out plan. The an­nounce­ment of ad­di­tion­al vac­cines will as­sist in re­duc­ing the lev­el of anx­i­ety among the pop­u­la­tion," the Cham­ber added.