The repa­tri­a­tion of T&T na­tion­als aboard Roy­al Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al’s (RCI) Vi­sion of the Seas hit a pos­si­ble snag yes­ter­day af­ter 29 St Vin­cent and the Grenadines crew mem­bers test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 on ar­rival to their home coun­try.
How­ev­er, the tests ad­min­is­tered to the Vin­cen­tians were an­ti­body test­ing not ap­proved by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion or the Min­istry of Health as a proven test for COVID-19. As such, the Vin­cent­ian gov­ern­ment will now ad­min­is­ter the more re­li­able Poly­merase Chain Re­ac­tor (PCR) tests to de­ter­mine the va­lid­i­ty of the first tests.

Thir­ty-one peo­ple ap­peared be­fore a vir­tu­al Mag­is­trates’ Court on Tues­day, charged with gath­er­ing in a group of more than five, in con­tra­ven­tion of the COVID-19 Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

The first day back to work for ad­min­is­tra­tive staff at the School of Ac­count­ing and Man­age­ment Stud­ies (SAMS) was cut short yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a vis­it from San Fer­nan­do po­lice.

Those with un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions can heap the num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es and as a re­sult every ef­fort must be tak­en to pro­tect this group most vul­ner­a­ble in the fight against the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

The list of To­ba­go ho­tels set to re­ceive por­tions of the Gov­ern­ment's $50 mil­lion bailout fea­tures busi­ness­es with­out a prop­er room count and no on­line pres­ence, says the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA). In fact, the body says they have nev­er heard of some of the busi­ness­es set to re­ceive State mon­ey.

The sec­ond set of cruise ship em­ploy­ees, a group of 53, was al­lowed to re­turn to T&T yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Shaykh Mu­naf Mo­hamed is a man strong­ly root­ed in the Is­lam­ic faith. For decades, he has been spread­ing the teach­ings of Is­lam- teach­ing Ara­bic on the Is­lam­ic Broad­cast­ing Net­work and at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Cen­tre for Lan­guage Learn­ing.

As the lock­down re­stric­tions im­ple­ment­ed by the Gov­ern­ment for COVID-19 are be­ing in­cre­men­tal­ly eased and peo­ple are re­quired to head back to work, there is now in­creased wor­ry and anx­i­ety among par­ents, es­pe­cial­ly sin­gle par­ents who have no al­ter­na­tive sup­port for their chil­dren, who will be out of school un­til Sep­tem­ber.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell has wel­comed the re­turn of six of the coun­try’s cruise ship work­ers.

One of the six Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who were on board the Caribbean Princess and al­lowed to re­turn home on Sat­ur­day says she cried when she was wel­comed back af­ter be­ing strand­ed at sea for months.

Al­most a month af­ter the coun­try learnt that 34-year-old Kris­sa Bis­soon was stuck in the Ba­hamas bat­tling cer­vi­cal can­cer, alone and afraid, the moth­er-of-one is re­unit­ed with her fam­i­ly.

De­fend­ing state­ments made by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter about ask­ing a cruise ship to dock in T&T wa­ters and quar­an­tine over 300 na­tion­als on board, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says the par­al­lel health care sys­tem set up to com­bat COVID-19 can­not hold so many peo­ple.