Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has made a case for keep­ing the 9 pm to 5 am cur­few and for ex­tend­ed the State of Emer­gency (SoE) by an ad­di­tion­al three months.

Dr Row­ley yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the cur­few pe­ri­od in a text ex­change with Guardian Me­dia, say­ing that it was nec­es­sary to re­duce move­ment and con­gre­gat­ing that could trig­ger a third wave of the COVID-19 virus.

“The cur­few re­duces mix­ing and con­gre­ga­tion of peo­ple where it is not nec­es­sary to have such ex­po­sure 9:00 pm to 5:00 am,” he said.

Mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, have asked for the cur­few hours to be re­laxed, with the Cham­ber sug­gest­ing that it be­gins at mid­night in­stead of 9 pm.

“This ap­proach is the most pru­dent in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty and like­li­hood of fac­ing a pos­si­ble Delta virus chal­lenge,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the cur­few would al­so sup­press the an­tic­i­pat­ed “free­dom par­ty­ing”.

“That is sure to fol­low any re­moval of the re­stric­tions,” he said.

Dr Row­ley al­so said that the ex­tend­ed cur­few cou­pled with the con­tin­ued vac­ci­na­tions would give “us the best chance to sup­port and sus­tain the gains we have made so far”.

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will break from re­cess on Wednes­day to de­bate the mo­tion for the ex­ten­sion which the Prime Min­is­ter will pi­lot and which can be passed with a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, not re­quir­ing Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had is­sued a me­dia re­lease Fri­day say­ing that with­out the req­ui­site da­ta to sup­port the ex­ten­sion, the move would be “dis­as­trous”.

But the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day said it was nec­es­sary to main­tain an “ag­gres­sive vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve na­tion­wide to have a larg­er pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion vac­ci­nat­ed be­fore we open up fur­ther”.

Dr Row­ley said that the aim was to “get more chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed so that they can get back to school once we hold or im­prove the in­fec­tion lev­els and rate of in­fec­tion”.

“Be­cause we have al­ready opened up so much of the coun­try for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and job re-es­tab­lish­ments we have to bal­ance that with strong re­stric­tions in the low­er pri­or­i­ty ar­eas,” he said.

“All of this is to be ac­com­pa­nied by the san­i­tiz­ing, mask-wear­ing and of course the SOE en­forces the “ no con­gre­ga­tion” of a pop­u­la­tion that is weary of Covid,” Row­ley said.

He said that the pop­u­la­tion, if not prop­er­ly guid­ed, could ex­hale and re­lax too quick­ly with one un­want­ed out­come.

“That is a re­turn to a full lock­down in an in­evitable third wave,” he said adding that some coun­tries are cur­rent­ly tot­ter­ing un­der a fourth wave.

“We must avoid that,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced the State of Emer­gency on May 15 and it is set to ex­pire at the end of Au­gust. This ex­ten­sion now takes the SoE to No­vem­ber.

On Thurs­day At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said that the SoE had borne a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fruit in that it has al­lowed an im­prove­ment in the bed avail­abil­i­ty at the par­al­lel health fa­cil­i­ties.

The AG said then that one pro­vi­sion in the SoE al­lowed for a broad­er cat­e­go­ry of per­son to ad­min­is­ter the vac­cines in­clud­ing med­ical and den­tal in­terns and vets.

Al-Rawi said that the ex­ist­ing Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance did not give as ro­bust a struc­ture as the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

Since the an­nounce­ment of the ex­ten­sion, var­i­ous cham­bers have come in sup­port of it but re­quest­ed that the tim­ing be ad­just­ed to mid­night to 5 am in or­der to give busi­ness­es more open­ing hours.

Al-Rawi said that the pow­er to de­ter­mine the hours of the cur­few rests with the Prime Min­is­ter.

COVID-19 claims six more lives

The Min­istry of Health an­nounced yes­ter­day that six more peo­ple had died from the virus, tak­ing the num­ber of deaths up to 1,225.

A fur­ther 71 have been in­fect­ed.

Mean­while, the num­ber of first dose vac­ci­na­tions moves clos­es to half a mil­lion, now stand­ing at 483,269 with a fur­ther 367,691 hav­ing gone on to re­ceive sec­ond dos­es.

At present, the coun­try has hun­dreds of thou­sands of World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO)-ap­proved vac­cines - Sinopharm, As­traZeneca, Pfiz­er and John­son & John­son - avail­able at mass vac­ci­na­tion sites and health cen­tres across the coun­try.

Per­son­al & do­mes­tic ser­vices, re­al es­tate re­sume

Per­son­al ser­vices, all do­mes­tic ser­vices and re­al es­tate ser­vices will re­sume op­er­a­tions to­day.

The Min­istry of Health not­ed yes­ter­day that spas, hair­dressers, hair and beau­ty tech­ni­cians and bar­bers can op­er­ate un­til fur­ther no­tice, Mon­day through Sun­day.

“Op­er­a­tors, em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers of the per­son­al ser­vices and re­al es­tate es­tab­lish­ments as well as home­own­ers and do­mes­tic work­ers are ad­vised to com­ply strict­ly with the (oth­er) le­gal re­quire­ments of the Emer­gency Pow­ers (No. 2) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021, the le­gal re­quire­ments of the Pub­lic Health [2019 Nov­el Coro­n­avirus (2019-nCoV)] (No. 18) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021 and the pub­lic health guide­lines,” the Health Min­istry said.