The Na­tion­al Rac­quet will serve as a step-down fa­cil­i­ty in the gov­ern­ment’s fight against the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic. This was re­vealed on Sat­ur­day as Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley, who toured the ten­nis fa­cil­i­ty along with Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr. Roshan Paras­ram. The Prime Min­is­ter re­leased a state­ment via his Face­book on Sat­ur­day stat­ing, “A vis­it was made to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Ra­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua which has been con­vert­ed in­to a 50-bed, step-down fa­cil­i­ty.”

Pres­i­dent of the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (TATT), Hay­den Mitchell, ex­pand­ed on the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment, telling Guardian Me­dia Sports, “They are us­ing the fa­cil­i­ty as a back-up. In times of na­tion­al cri­sis, all these sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties can al­so dou­ble as cen­tres.”

The gov­ern­ment has con­vert­ed the in­te­ri­or, where the cafe­te­ria is, in­to a hold­ing area for rough­ly 50 beds and the play­ers lounge in­to an area for doc­tors. Mitchell al­so con­firmed the show­er and wash­room fa­cil­i­ties are al­so up to stan­dard.

This has been a com­mon sight around the world. Re­al Madrid’s San­ti­a­go Bern­abéu has been turned in­to a stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre for med­ical ma­te­ri­als while Ger­many's biggest foot­ball sta­di­um, Borus­sia Dort­mund's Sig­nal-Iduna-Park, was par­tial­ly trans­formed in­to a med­ical cen­tre to help treat pa­tients.

Mitchell, who is al­so a Sportt Com­pa­ny di­rec­tor and who heads a sub-com­mit­tee in charge of fa­cil­i­ties con­firmed no pa­tients were yet at the Rac­quet Cen­tre. “They just have it as a back-up as part of their plan,” he said.

While the TATT pres­i­dent said he con­veyed with his ex­ec­u­tive be­fore the de­ci­sion was made, Mitchell gave the as­sur­ance the fa­cil­i­ty will be prop­er­ly san­i­tized when the pan­dem­ic is over. He said, “I had a dis­cus­sion with the chair­man (Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho) and the new­ly re-ap­point­ed Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO Ja­son Williams) and that was high on the itin­er­ary. As soon as they are fin­ished, they have al­ready iden­ti­fied com­pa­nies to come and do the full san­i­ti­za­tion of the en­tire place so that would not be an is­sue and, of course, I will en­sure that they do a prop­er job.”

The na­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty closed with oth­ers two weeks ago as the out­break got worse around the coun­try. He could not con­firm whether any oth­er na­tion­al sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties will be used in the re­cov­ery ef­fort, say­ing, “Not to my knowl­edge but I guess this will be part of their whole na­tion­al plan in terms of the re­sponse.”