All cit­i­zens anx­ious to vis­it their favourite wa­ter­ing­holes or those yearn­ing for that cur­ry duck lime by the riv­er with friends will be able to do so from Mon­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­nounced that all bars, gyms and beach­es will re­open Mon­day. How­ev­er, all busi­ness­es must close at 10 pm.

He made this an­nounce­ment dur­ing a COVID-19 press con­fer­ence at the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary Fa­cil­i­ty, To­ba­go, Sat­ur­day as he an­nounced the fifth phase of the Gov­ern­ment's re­open­ing plan af­ter it be­gan shut­ting down the coun­try in March to pre­vent the spread of the virus.

The PM an­nounced that T&T's "num­bers are hold­ing well" but that the "coun­try re­mains ex­posed to the rigours of the virus."

Among the oth­er mea­sures he an­nounced was the full re­open­ing of the pub­lic ser­vice. In-house din­ing will re­sume at restau­rants. Cin­e­mas, bars, casi­nos and mem­ber’s clubs will re­open from to­mor­row as well. Beach­es, rivers, amuse­ment parks gyms and the zoo will al­so be open to the pub­lic from Mon­day.

Malls will al­so be al­lowed to ful­ly re­open in­clud­ing food courts. Team sports will re­sume but with no spec­ta­tors, and pub­lic trans­porta­tion in­clud­ing the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice will re­vert to 100 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

Ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tutes will be al­lowed to re­open for ex­am­i­na­tions.

He al­so said there can be any num­ber of peo­ple at wed­dings and fu­ner­als as long as at­ten­dees ob­serve all pro­to­cols and guide­lines es­tab­lished for places of wor­ship. Places of wor­ship will no longer have to be re­strict­ed to one-hour ser­vices as reg­u­lar ser­vice times can re­sume, but wor­ship­pers must al­so con­tin­ue to prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing and fol­low the req­ui­site guide­lines.

Oth­er pub­lic gath­er­ings must not ex­ceed 25 peo­ple.

Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram gave an overview of the guide­lines. "We are ask­ing that any con­gre­ga­tion stick to a max­i­mum of 25 per­sons in a pub­lic space which in­clud­ed beach­es and rivers. Please con­form to hand wash­ing and sani­ti­sa­tion guide­lines and the wear­ing of face masks where ap­plic­a­ble," he said. Be­fore now on­ly ten peo­ple could gath­er in pub­lic spaces.

The CMO al­so warned that gym own­ers and op­er­a­tors should al­so en­sure that sur­faces in shared ar­eas be sani­tised on a reg­u­lar ba­sis.

Bad news for par­ty­go­ers, how­ev­er. The Prime Min­is­ter said "par­ty boats and club­bing...be­cause you by your very na­ture are not go­ing to be able to con­form to the pro­to­cols re­quired, these ac­tiv­i­ties are not per­mit­ted."

The coun­try’s bor­ders will re­main closed at this time with ex­emp­tions be­ing grant­ed to na­tion­als wish­ing to re­turn home. How­ev­er, Dr Row­ley said that pri­or­i­ty would be giv­en to "peo­ple that left tem­porar­i­ly to work abroad or re­ceive med­ical treat­ment," peo­ple who reg­u­lar­ly re­side in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Row­ley, al­though the fi­nan­cial cost of main­ten­ing the day-to-day op­er­a­tions at Caribbean Air­lines is be­ing done at a loss to tax­pay­ers, it must be done "due to the lev­el of risk and the un­ac­cept­able eco­nom­ics of go­ing in one di­rec­tion." He said op­er­a­tions would re­sume at soon as pos­si­ble in the first in­stance con­duct­ing se­mi-char­ters to move peo­ple in and out of the coun­try, when there is no longer a pub­lic health risk.