Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day called on peo­ple to can­cel the COVID par­ties they have been plan­ning.

Fol­low­ing a re­cent spike in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es, po­lice are ready to give do­mes­tic vi­o­lence per­pe­tra­tors “Stay Home” or­ders in an “un­com­fort­able” place.

Med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and own­ers of pri­vate health in­sti­tu­tions say the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) has no au­thor­i­ty to val­i­date labs in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Less than 24 hours af­ter he an­nounced it, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day can­celled his min­istry’s plan to hire pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms for res­i­den­tial pa­trols, since he said peo­ple have ques­tioned if it was nec­es­sary at this time.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James views Gov­ern­ment’s move to can­cel the con­tracts of four pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms re­tained to pro­vide com­mu­ni­ty pa­trols in res­i­den­tial dis­tricts as sus­pi­cious, cu­ri­ous and a cause for con­cern.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young says a diplo­mat­ic note has been sent to Bar­ba­dos of­fi­cials con­cern­ing COVID-19 test­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who have been in that coun­try for the past two weeks, as a po­ten­tial first step to­wards get­ting them back home.

The Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Units (DMUs) of the var­i­ous re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are as­sist­ing the Health Min­istry in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of face masks in all mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties to help curb COVID-19 spread.

Yes­ter­day’s clo­sure of food out­lets and restau­rants fol­low­ing the tight­en­ing of COVID-19 mea­sures by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, can re­sult in the coun­try’s poul­try in­dus­try los­ing $25 mil­lion in chick­en sales over the next four weeks.

Days af­ter cit­i­zens were ad­vised to wear fab­ric/cloth face masks in pub­lic to pro­tect them­selves against COVID-19, lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers say the de­mand has sky­rock­et­ed and they are now strug­gling to sat­is­fy the or­ders flow­ing in from the cor­po­rate sec­tor and pri­vate cit­i­zens.

Pri­vate labs are be­ing en­cour­aged to ob­tain val­i­da­tion to bol­ster test­ing avail­abil­i­ty for COVID-19 in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

With Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh en­cour­ag­ing pri­vate labs to seek their CARPHA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to do COVID-19 test­ing, some of them have al­ready be­gun mak­ing arrange­ments to do so.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s main busi­ness cham­bers are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to help them save jobs by im­ple­ment­ing a tax cred­it on salaries for com­pa­nies that do not make any prof­it over the next three months.