Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is hop­ing the po­lice have a “Par­ty Me­ter” to find COVID-19 lock­down of­fend­ers who have par­ties.

“I hope every par­ty ends up with full Black Marias (po­lice vans) go­ing off to jail ... they’re be­ing hard­ened, de­struc­tive and un­co­op­er­a­tive. Par­ties are where peo­ple can get in­fect­ed—then they’ll turn to the state for health­care and ac­com­mo­da­tion,” he said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice bust­ed two COVID par­ties last week­end, one in St Ann’s and one in Waller­field.

Row­ley added that the fight was at the in­di­vid­ual lev­el and every­one was a “sol­dier in this fight where you stand, sit, walk ...”

He al­so ques­tioned what a state of emer­gency would do for pa­tients since that brought more pow­ers for po­lice and re­stric­tion of cit­i­zens’ rights.

“What you’ll have to do to re­spond to the virus won’t change, so we might as well get on with it whether SoE or not—spa­tial dis­tanc­ing, per­son­al hy­giene and most im­por­tant­ly be­ing your broth­er’s keep­er,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

On the is­sue of the restart of the school term, Row­ley said while there hadn’t been dis­cus­sion on pri­vate schools, Cab­i­net yes­ter­day got an up­date from the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry on pos­si­ble “win­dows” for ad­just­ing the term. One is May-June and that would be based on good out­comes with the virus. If things aren’t so good, the oth­er op­tion is Sep­tem­ber. (See page 8)

Row­ley said the 2021 term could be the ca­su­al­ty of what’s hap­pen­ing in 2020. He said he un­der­stood anx­i­ety and ten­sion among chil­dren on the SEA ex­am, but he said T&T is now in a once-in-a-life­time sit­u­a­tion where “we’re try­ing to sur­vive”.

With re­stric­tions in place un­til April 30, he said Gov­ern­ment’s scan­ning the hori­zon to see when schools could re­open.

“This is where we have to let anx­i­ety be tem­pered by the sci­ence and let de­ci­sions be made by the sci­ence and pub­lic health ex­perts,” he said, not­ing in the anx­i­ety to end the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, one has to be care­ful not to do any­thing to al­low the virus to re-emerge.