Gail Alexan­der

Pupils prepar­ing for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion will do their work at home from to­day un­til the Au­gust 20 test - and bars and restau­rants are now the biggest COVID-19 risk.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day an­nounced the de­vel­op­ments as COVID-19 cas­es rose by five to 199.

And he’s made a spe­cial ap­peal to the po­lice for en­force­ment of the law re­gard­ing bars and restau­rants.

“I want to see the laws en­forced to the lim­it!” he de­clared.

Min­istry of Health au­thor­i­ties yes­ter­day re­vealed that a “fair num­ber” of su­per-spread­ing was not­ed among peo­ple who had con­tract­ed in­fec­tions in two or three bars and had spread it to an un­re­lat­ed group.

Row­ley said what T&T did n the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic was still serv­ing the coun­try well and the virus wasn’t rag­ing out of con­trol. He said the con­tacts of the re­cent cas­es have been found, oth­ers were be­ing traced and he didn’t want pan­ic re­ac­tions.

He said f it comes to a point where the risk re­quires cer­tain oth­er de­ci­sions and more needs to be done, “then we’ll make those de­ci­sions – but we’re not there now.”

But he said some things have in­creased risk and in the mon­i­tor­ing schools af­ter SEA stu­dents went out to class­es, it has been not­ed nine chil­dren had the virus - in­clud­ing four from the SEA group and five oth­ers.

“We don’t want to live with that as a high-risk area even though we want to get the ex­am done,” Row­ley added.

Gov­ern­ment and health ex­perts con­clud­ed the SEA stu­dents shouldn’t con­tin­ue go­ing to school to do their prepa­ra­tions.

“We de­cid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue that at this stage from (to­day),” the PM said.

He said it was ex­pect­ed the pupils will now do their prepa­ra­tions at home. Row­ley ap­pealed for par­ents to help their charges pre­pare over the next two weeks, adding Gov­ern­ment is still com­mit­ted to hav­ing the ex­am on Au­gust 20.

“Let’s hold the line to that test,” he said.

But if there’s an ex­plo­sion of cas­es ahead the Gov­ern­ment would have to re­act, he added.

Row­ley al­so said there would be no change on the planned re­open­ing of schools in the first week of Sep­tem­ber but ad­mit­ted they will be opened with some el­e­ment of risk man­age­ment.

“We’ll mon­i­tor it for an­oth­er two weeks and based on what comes up, then we’ll con­firm that date or re­view for change. But for now, we’ll leave it the way it is. If the risk is too much, we’ll ad­just ac­cord­ing­ly.”

Row­ley said he was al­so a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed at the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTUTA) call to teach­ers not to re­port for work be­fore yes­ter­day’s de­ci­sion.

“When we say we’re in this to­geth­er, we mean every­body and all de­ci­sions are made for all. But it’s not help­ful if peo­ple in lead­er­ship po­si­tions won’t ac­cept what Trinidad and To­ba­go is do­ing as they want to pro­tect them­selves bet­ter,” he not­ed.

He asked what would hap­pen if oth­er groups like nurs­es say the same.

“Then all fall down. This ‘My-Way-Or-The-High­way’ po­si­tion de­rails our ef­fort. Every­one in Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­posed to some risk so no one should say they won’t take ‘risk’ and stay away from schools.’’

Bar limes cre­at­ing su­per spread­ers

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so not­ed that Pub­lic Ser­vice num­bers are be­ing ro­tat­ed to con­trol ex­po­sure to the virus. The pri­vate sec­tor, he said, has al­so been very co-op­er­a­tive with ad­just­ments and Gov­ern­ment isn’t see­ing in­creased in­fec­tions there.

How­ev­er, he not­ed, “The biggest risk we’re fac­ing now is from our lim­ing and drink­ing friends, those eat­ing out and in restau­rants and bars. We have in­stances of trac­ing tak­ing us to those lo­ca­tions.

“Bars and restau­rants re­main a threat. We’re dou­bling up on our dai­ly mon­i­tor­ing of them. This morn­ing I spoke to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter to speak to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to en­force the law - I want to see the laws en­forced to the lim­it! There’s no re­place­ment mod­el for this. Pro­tec­tion re­mains in law be­ing en­forced.”

He not­ed the “ir­re­spon­si­ble mi­nor­i­ty” in bars and peo­ple go­ing to par­ties and be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble threat­ened na­tion­al well-be­ing.

“All that’s re­quired is be­ing re­spon­si­ble. If you’re go­ing for a drink be alert to who’s close to you. If you’re in a crowd of more than 10, you’re break­ing the law,” he said.

Row­ley said the last lock­down cost bil­lions and if a lock­down had to be re­turned to that mon­ey isn’t avail­able.

“Jobs we saved in that lock­down, may not be sal­vage­able in an­oth­er,” he said.

He said if peo­ple wore masks and didn’t con­gre­gate they’d per­son­al­ly con­tribute to halt­ing the virus’ spread.