Some man­u­fac­tur­ers re­port­ed a slow start to the sec­ond phase of T&T’s COVID-19 re­open­ing pro­gramme yes­ter­day but oth­er sec­tors said they were ex­treme­ly busy.

San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain taxi dri­vers are not back­ing down de­spite a furore by the trav­el­ling pub­lic over their de­ci­sion to raise the fare to $5 from June 1.

Close to 100 stu­dents of the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COSTAATT), whose class­es tran­si­tioned to on­line de­liv­ery mode be­cause of COVID-19, are ben­e­fit­ting from a do­na­tion of com­put­ers made by the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny.

For devo­tees un­able to ob­serve the holy month of Ra­madan in the usu­al way be­cause of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a San Fer­nan­do masjid arranged If­tar curb­side pick­ups.

Al­most three months af­ter COVID-19 brought an ex­o­dus to a size­able por­tion of T&T’s work­force, sin­gle moth­ers and young men are still clam­our­ing for fi­nan­cial sup­port.

The dra­mat­ic res­cue of 32 Venezue­lan na­tion­als from a sink­ing pirogue by Coast Guard of­fi­cers trig­gered a COVID-19 scare at the Ce­dros Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex yes­ter­day af­ter some of the Venezue­lans ap­peared to be sick.

As Thurs­day wel­comes an ear­li­er than ini­tial­ly pro­ject­ed start to Phase Two of the coun­try re­sum­ing from pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions, the Phar­ma­cy Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go is hop­ing the cur­rent clos­ing hour for phar­ma­cies would be re­viewed and an ex­ten­sion would be giv­en.

Do you re­mem­ber what it felt like be­ing read to by your par­ents or old­er sib­ling, as they got ready to tuck you in­to bed at night? Well, that feel­ing of safe­ty and warmth is what SAP Ter­ri­to­ry Man­ag­er Ele­na Dy­er and Soft­ware and Web Con­tent Man­age­ment Ar­chi­tect, Kevin Blake Thomas want­ed to do for the chil­dren of Trinidad and To­ba­go when they de­cid­ed to cre­ate the vir­tu­al Read 2 Me plat­form— a new ser­vice which pro­vides free nar­ra­tions of lo­cal books for small chil­dren and teens with the mis­sion state­ment— “As long as schools are closed, we’ll be tuck­ing the na­tion's chil­dren to bed!”

Pres­i­dent of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), Lu­ta­lo “Broth­er Re­sis­tance” Masim­ba is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ap­point an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team to fo­cus specif­i­cal­ly on the en­ter­tain­ment and cre­ative sec­tors in T&T.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has shown peo­ple all over the world how pre­pared or not they are for emer­gen­cies.

The Min­istry of Health’s threat of pos­si­ble crim­i­nal charges forced one pri­vate med­ical lab­o­ra­to­ry to halt COVID-19 test­ing on Fri­day, spark­ing con­cern that elec­tive surg­eries at pri­vate hos­pi­tals could be post­poned.

Clamp­ing down on COVID-19 test­ing by pri­vate labs could trig­ger a “tidal wave” in cas­es, ac­cord­ing to Med­corp Lim­it­ed chair­man Dr Kong­shiek Achong Low.