The stay-at-home or­der in ef­fect in T&T and the clo­sure of this coun­try's bor­ders have been ex­tend­ed to May 15.

The an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yon Sat­ur­day came five days be­fore the April 30 dead­line for the cur­rent lock­down was due to end.

The PM will re­turn to the pop­u­la­tion on May 10 to ad­vise if there are any changes.

Hours af­ter meet­ing with tech­ni­cal ex­perts from the Min­istry of Health dur­ing the mid-morn­ing pe­ri­od, Row­ley said "We start­ed out on a fair­ly long jour­ney. We are still on that jour­ney and there's still a long way to go. How­ev­er, we can re­port that our trav­els have not been as painful as it could have been."

Com­par­ing T&T's po­si­tion to oth­ers, he said, "T&T to­day is in a fair­ly good place be­cause we have tak­en cer­tain steps that have paid us div­i­dends with re­spect to con­trol­ling the neg­a­tive out­put that could have come to us."

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, Row­ley said while the lo­cal health sys­tem had so far weath­ered the fall­out from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, they could not af­ford to pre­ma­ture­ly re­lax the rigid mea­sures cur­rent­ly in place as it could still prove to be detri­men­tal for the pop­u­la­tion.

He said, "It is still an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion but we have evad­ed the health cri­sis in the phys­i­cal sense of hav­ing pa­tients de­scend­ing on the hos­pi­tals."

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the fi­nan­cial and men­tal pains the lock­down has had on cit­i­zens, Row­ley said, "Some per­sons are say­ing we should open back the econ­o­my and al­low per­sons to come out and be them­selves, but just re­mem­ber that the on­ly rea­son why we can speak to­day about be­ing in a po­si­tion that is not calami­tous, is be­cause we have done the things that have made it stress­ful for us."

He warned, "If we did not do those things and if we are not do­ing those things, we will have a dif­fer­ent sto­ry."

In­di­cat­ing there was a re­sis­tance to what has so far been done, Row­ley said it would have been vast­ly dif­fer­ent if T&T's ex­pe­ri­ence had been, "Mul­ti­ple coffins head­ing to the mor­tu­ary or ceme­tery on a reg­u­lar ba­sis."

He warned, "Let us not take that as a li­cence to be­have as though the threat no longer ex­ists. The virus is alive and well. And as we speak about open­ing up, let us have the open­ing up on the same ba­sis as the man­age­ment has done to date, which is be guid­ed by the sci­en­tists, be guid­ed by the da­ta, be guid­ed by the ad­vice to the Gov­ern­ment by our pub­lic health ex­perts."

He said, "We have done well so far. The ques­tion now is how much fur­ther can we go in pre­serv­ing and hope­ful­ly, im­prov­ing our chances of evad­ing calami­ty. We can­not now re­lax and do what would get us in­to trou­ble."

The PM said based on the ap­proach thus far and the re­quire­ments as out­lined by the Pub­lic Health De­part­ment, "We are re­quired to give the tech­ni­cal peo­ple a fur­ther 14 days to con­duct ex­am­i­na­tions of the pop­u­la­tion out­side of the hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion sit­u­a­tion."

Row­ley said al­though the au­thor­i­ties were not see­ing in­creased pre­sen­ta­tions of the virus or oth­er ail­ments to doc­tors around the coun­try, the health of­fi­cials still need­ed to get out in­to the com­mu­ni­ties and in­ves­ti­gate the wider pop­u­la­tion.

"By the 10th of May, we should be in a po­si­tion, if things go well, to be able to to say to you we can now re­lax a lot of what we have now con­strict­ed," Row­ley said as he ad­vised, "Con­tin­ue to stay at home, con­tin­ue with the hy­giene and con­tin­ue with the phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing be­cause those things have worked for us."

He added, "We have es­tab­lished May 10 as the time by which we would have seen enough of the sam­pling of the peo­ple from the pop­u­la­tion so that is our hori­zon for the mo­ment."

More open­ing days for hard­ware stores

As part of the move to ease the re­stric­tions gov­ern­ing the op­er­a­tions of hard­ware stores across T&T, Row­ley said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would be asked to fur­ther amend the reg­u­la­tions to al­low them to open for six days--half day each day ex­cept on Sun­days.

This move would re­sult in such busi­ness­es mov­ing from op­er­at­ing on­ly half day three days per week, as the pre­vi­ous amend­ment had seen their hours re­duced, af­ter it was not­ed that mem­bers of the pub­lic con­tin­ued to con­gre­gate in such es­tab­lish­ments.

T&T stu­dents to get aid this week

Al­though the na­tion's bor­ders will re­main closed un­til May 15, ap­pli­ca­tions for ex­emp­tions can con­tin­ue to be made to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young. Re­fer­ring to a group of T&T na­tion­als who re­main strand­ed in Suri­nam at this time, Row­ley said if they could or­gan­ise a flight home, per­mis­sion would be grant­ed for their re-en­try in­to the coun­try.

And for those T&T stu­dents which the Gov­ern­ment is re­spon­si­ble for at cam­pus­es abroad, Row­ley as­sured fi­nan­cial aid would be pro­vid­ed to them be­gin­ning by as ear­ly as Mon­day.