While most peo­ple were ad­her­ing to the COVID-19 Stay-at-Home re­stric­tions, 25 hectares of the Ec­cesville Wind­belt Re­serve in Rio Claro were bull­dozed by rogue farm­ers des­per­ate for state land to ex­pand their agri­cul­tur­al busi­ness.

This coun­try’s pri­vate sec­tor has ear­marked Mon­day (May 4) as the day it will be ready to re-open its doors for busi­ness on a phased ba­sis. And they feel they will need all the good­will they can get to face the cur­rent COVID-19 chal­lenge.

T&T has been ranked sec­ond in the world in terms of its readi­ness to end stay-at-home mea­sures but the Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is in­sist­ing our guards should not be let down.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive his first re­port from T&T’s Road Map Com­mit­tee on how to deal with the fall­out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on May 8.

The un­usu­al oc­cur­rence of strokes among youths bat­tling COVID-19 is yet an­oth­er rea­son to pre­vent the virus' spread - be­cause lo­cal au­thor­i­ties haven’t yet in­sti­tut­ed treat­ment for these strokes.

The T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA) is ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er a $1 mil­lion pay­out in the event any nurse los­es their life dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Econ­o­mists be­lieve Gov­ern­ment will have to man­age the econ­o­my very care­ful­ly go­ing for­ward in light of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment of a mas­sive $15 bil­lion bud­get deficit due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and crash in oil and gas prices on Mon­day.

The next lab to go on stream for test­ing may be at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty or To­ba­go’s RHA - and di­ag­nos­tic test­ing for the virus will al­so be done at hos­pi­tals ahead.

A de­ci­sion on whether Trinidad and To­ba­go's 2021 Car­ni­val will be can­celled due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic should be made in the next 90 days, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters says.

Af­ter strug­gling through hard­ship as a child, Kris­sa Bis­soon was fi­nal­ly see­ing the sun­light through the storm when she land­ed a job at a suc­cess­ful con­struc­tion firm in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas. 
That was in Feb­ru­ary.

Even as the coun­try en­ters an even greater pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty, some peo­ple are pre­tend­ing to be poor to get ham­pers so they can hoard them for lat­er use.The rev­e­la­tion was made yes­ter­day by di­rec­tor of the ASH-NAD foun­da­tion Ash­mead Ali, who has been dis­trib­ut­ing thou­sands of ham­pers to the poor.  In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Ali said his or­gan­i­sa­tion has been ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic to sub­mit names, ad­dress­es, phone num­bers and a syn­op­sis of their plight. How­ev­er, he said they have been re­al­is­ing that many peo­ple were giv­ing wrong in­for­ma­tion de­lib­er­ate­ly so they could qual­i­fy for ham­pers to get more than one. “We be­came aware of this when some­one called say­ing she was a sin­gle moth­er with three chil­dren then two days lat­er she said she was a sin­gle moth­er with two chil­dren. In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed she was not be­ing hon­est. Then some­one ac­ci­den­tal­ly sent a voice record­ing say­ing they must say they were very poor with sev­er­al chil­dren and make it look as if their cir­cum­stances were very des­per­ate,” Ali said. He said be­cause of this they have stopped giv­ing ham­pers to callers with­out do­ing prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions.“Now we in­ter­view peo­ple more. It seems the ones who are gen­uine­ly poor do not have the in­ter­net or smart­phones. We get their num­bers from the re­li­gious lead­ers in the com­mu­ni­ties and from the coun­cil­lors,” he said. Ali said they were al­so no longer giv­ing the ham­pers to MPs and coun­cil­lors but were drop­ping them off them­selves. He said they were scru­ti­n­is­ing every re­quest and as they dis­trib­ute ham­pers they are now al­so com­pil­ing a list of fam­i­lies who need as­sis­tance in ren­o­vat­ing their homes.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says the Gov­ern­ment's hands are tied re­gard­ing calls from Trinci­ty Mall ten­ants for help with rental fees dur­ing the COVID-19 shut­down.