Gov­ern­ment has re­ceived high marks for its han­dling of COVID-19 and the eco­nom­ic and so­cial fall-out from the pan­dem­ic.

A new To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary is ex­pect­ed to be elect­ed to­day dur­ing a spe­cial Sit­ting called by Clerk of the As­sem­bly Cher­ry Anne Ed­wards-Louis.

Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vice (MS­DFS) Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is warn­ing church­es across the coun­try that they will be held ac­count­able to God if they mis­ap­pro­pri­ate funds aimed at help­ing the poor dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh will seek the ad­vice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi on whether the wear­ing of face masks in pub­lic should be­come law.

As the num­ber of con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ues to de­crease, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram has ad­mit­ted that very few peo­ple are go­ing to pub­lic health cen­tres and emer­gency de­part­ments to get test­ed for the virus.

Hours af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers stopped the sale of the self-ti­tled “de­con­struct­ed” dou­bles at a gas sta­tion and con­ve­nience store on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith of­fered an apol­o­gy to the busi­ness place, re­scind­ed the act and al­lowed sales to re­sume.

Re­li­gious bod­ies are all re­port­ing an in­crease in the amount of des­per­ate peo­ple reach­ing out to them for as­sis­tance, as the COVID-19 re­stric­tions and shut­downs have left thou­sands of fam­i­lies with­out any in­come.

Al­though Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat says there is no da­ta to prove many cit­i­zens are suf­fer­ing from “se­vere hunger,” his the­o­ry is be­ing dis­put­ed by the lead­ers of sev­er­al char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tions.

A re­port­ed COVID-19 par­ty in Las Cuevas end­ed in tragedy ear­ly Sunday when a Barataria woman lost her life and sev­er­al oth­ers were in­jured when the ve­hi­cle they were re­turn­ing home in crashed.

Af­ter over a month of un­cer­tain­ty, 70 Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who had been strand­ed in Suri­name since the clo­sure of this coun­try’s bor­ders on March 22 re­turned home yes­ter­day.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says his of­fi­cers made the right de­ci­sion to in­ter­vene and shut down a food ham­per dri­ve at the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty in Port-of-Spain on Friday.

Any na­tion that as­sists Venezuela in avoid­ing em­bar­goes will face sweep­ing sanc­tions im­posed by the Unit­ed States.