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.

Speak­ing at Sat­ur­day’s me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Row­ley said checks re­vealed many of the vil­las, guest hous­es and ho­tels had been booked for the sea­son by peo­ple want­i­ng to get some re­lax­ation.

How­ev­er, he said, “Some peo­ple, large­ly Trinida­di­ans, who go to To­ba­go now in a vil­la be­lieve that be­cause you are in a vil­la in To­ba­go, it is a par­ty to have. Could I ap­peal to you and say en­joy your vil­la, en­joy the beach, en­joy the glass-bot­tomed boat trips, en­joy the hikes but what­ev­er you are en­gaged in, what­ev­er it is you are en­gaged in, do not do so in large groups and the best you can do is to stay with­in your clos­est group which is your clos­est fam­i­ly, oth­er­wise we are go­ing to end up like some coun­tries who thought that they were hav­ing the bet­ter of this virus.”

Row­ley warned, “It on­ly takes a few days to go from feel­ing com­fort­able to re­al­is­ing that you are be­ing over­whelmed.”

Re­flect­ing on the sta­tis­tics that had been record­ed af­ter Di­vali, he said it showed there had been no un­to­ward be­hav­iours that had im­pact­ed the num­ber of cas­es.

Re­fer­ring to the Christ­mas sea­son, he said, “We re­al­ly have to step up. We re­al­ly have to be­come more re­spon­si­ble in the Christ­mas sea­son. Let this Christ­mas be a Christ­mas with a dif­fer­ence, not a dif­fer­ence be­cause you in­fect­ed your grand­par­ents and you lose one or two; you in­fect­ed your neigh­bour or the per­son you hadn’t seen for a long time, let that not be the dif­fer­ence and worse, let it not be the Christ­mas where your young child or chil­dren are num­bered among the ones that Dr Trot­man just de­scribed.”

As Diego Mar­tin West MP, Row­ley said, “There are a num­ber of house­holds and com­mu­ni­ties in the West­ern part of Trinidad, pop­u­lat­ed by peo­ple who be­lieve that it does not ap­ply to them be­cause they live in a high-end dis­trict.

“There is no high-end COVID-19. You will meet the low end, hos­pi­tal care and the morgue just like any­body else.”

“I am ap­peal­ing to you, to not give your­self any pass be­cause of where you live or who you are be­cause the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion is de­pend­ing on you to not be­have in that self­ish way and ex­pose us to a Christ­mas sea­son where af­ter Christ­mas, we find our­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where Dr Hinds is giv­ing us a dif­fer­ent re­port.”

To peo­ple con­sid­er­ing or plan­ning to at­tend par­ties dur­ing this pe­ri­od, the PM ad­vised them to think care­ful­ly about the reper­cus­sions.