In an ef­fort for all sport­ing per­son­nel to "Be In The Know" about the COVID-19 bio-safe­ty mea­sures for sports, the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) host­ed the first of two ses­sions on Sat­ur­day, to en­sure that are all stake­hold­ers are well-in­formed.

Some of the main top­ics dis­cussed dur­ing the open­ing "Be In The Know" We­bi­nar in­clud­ed com­pe­ti­tion pre­pared­ness, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive cas­es, vac­ci­na­tion, re­quire­ments for trav­el and PCR test­ing, which was prompt­ed by the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Tokyo Olympic Games in Japan.

The 2020 Olympics was de­layed by a year due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic which al­lowed for the re­or­gan­is­ing of the world's pre­mier sport­ing event. In re­strate­gis­ing, the or­gan­is­ers im­ple­ment­ed play­books, which out­lined rules for ath­letes, of­fi­cials and me­dia at­tend­ing the Games.

It was here that COVID-19 Li­ai­son Of­fi­cers (CLO) were in­tro­duced and they were re­quired to alert of­fi­cials to any breach­es with­in their own del­e­ga­tion.

Rheeza Grant served as T&T's CLO at the Tokyo Olympics and on the week­end she was one of the fea­ture speak­ers at the vir­tu­al event, shar­ing on her ex­pe­ri­ence in Japan and pro­vid­ed valu­able in­for­ma­tion to op­er­ate in the 'new nor­mal' for sports.

"Sports will nev­er be the same once COVID-19 is around and in or­der to keep sport alive, we must do cer­tain things," said Grant. "Be­come vac­ci­nat­ed. Ap­point a CLO, es­pe­cial­ly to ma­jor games or a man­ag­er/coach should be equipped with the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion for the pur­pose of com­pe­ti­tion and train­ing.

"Com­mu­ni­ca­tion with key stake­hold­ers in sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions as well as your lo­cal Min­istries."

She added: "En­sure that you are up to date with the rel­e­vant COVID-19 in­for­ma­tion. Pro­vide the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to the del­e­ga­tion. En­sure every­one com­plies with all the rules in what­ev­er coun­ter­mea­sures guide­line man­u­al and books that it may have for the spe­cif­ic event/game.

"Col­lab­o­rat­ing with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al health au­thor­i­ties and oth­er par­ties in case of find­ing COVID-19 pos­i­tive, any symp­toms of COVID, or close con­tact among the del­e­ga­tion mem­bers be­fore, dur­ing and even five to sev­en days af­ter trav­el."

Grant had first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence at the Games deal­ing with is­sue of three mem­bers of the T&T del­e­ga­tion test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19. Two ath­letes, hur­dler Sparkle McK­night, long jumper An­duwelle Wright and Wright's coach Wen­dell Williams. Then, they had to be quar­an­tined fol­low­ing COVID-19 test­ing at the Games Vil­lage and took no fur­ther part in the event.

It def­i­nite­ly was a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for Grant to which shared a break­down of the guide­lines she fol­lowed at the Tokyo Games, point­ing out the im­por­tance of mak­ing a check­list, as fol­lows:

1 Pre-de­par­ture - Com­pil­ing the doc­u­ments for im­mi­gra­tion, COVID-19 neg­a­tive cer­tifi­cates and three COVID-19 PCR Tests was con­duct­ed, re­lat­ing to the Tokyo Olympics.

2 Dur­ing stay - En­sured rule-com­pli­ance dur­ing the en­tire stay; re­serv­ing and su­per­vis­ing reg­u­lar for tests the del­e­ga­tion mem­bers, col­lab­o­rat­ing with the coun­try's health au­thor­i­ties, in­ter­na­tion­al fed­er­a­tion, lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee and oth­ers for COVID-19 re­lat­ed mat­ters.

3 De­par­ture - En­sur­ing re­spec­tive mem­bers take the re­quired PCR test if nec­es­sary. En­sur­ing all mem­bers com­plete the Em­i­gra­tion process smooth­ly.

Ear­li­er, Dr Ter­ry Ali, chair­man of the First Cit­i­zen's Sports Foun­da­tion, al­so spoke on the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing these times and ad­vised that pro­to­cols will vary for each coun­try.

"We learn that we must com­mu­ni­cate well be­cause pro­to­cols are dif­fer­ent from coun­try to coun­try.

"If we are go­ing to par­tic­i­pate, if we are go­ing to host a ma­jor event we must have good com­mu­ni­ca­tions, good in­ter­ac­tions and I like the idea of what Japan did, they set up the COVID-19 of­fi­cer who could in­ter­act and in­ter­face with oth­er COVID of­fi­cers from oth­er coun­tries," said Dr Ali.

"We need to un­der­stand, one, the health pro­to­cols in our coun­try and the health pro­to­cols every­where. This is not a time to make a de­ci­sion to trav­el with­out un­der­stand­ing oth­er coun­tries' pro­to­cols and your own pro­to­cols.

"We must know that it dif­fers from coun­try to coun­try and the coun­tries we are go­ing to, we must un­der­stand a num­ber of things. We must un­der­stand their pro­to­cols, we must un­der­stand their na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty re­quire­ments. We must un­der­stand the trav­el re­quire­ments be­fore we get on the plane.

"We must un­der­stand the re­quire­ments for test­ing and re­sults, the lan­guage they are writ­ten in, we must un­der­stand quar­an­tine be­fore or do we quar­an­tine af­ter, do we start the bub­ble be­fore or do we start the bub­ble af­ter.

"And we must un­der­stand the man­date and vac­ci­na­tion," said Dr Ali, who closed with: "Al­ways be in the know."