The 22 re­main­ing peo­ple quar­an­tined at Camp Ba­lan­dra af­ter com­ing off the ill-fat­ed Caribbean cruise aboard the Cos­ta Favolosa on March 17 are now re­ceiv­ing coun­selling.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is writ­ing to the Bar­ba­di­an au­thor­i­ties seek­ing to have the group of T&T na­tion­als un­der manda­to­ry quar­an­tine there test­ed for COVID-19 when they com­plete their 14- day quar­an­tine.

Chil­dren have been among the 100 peo­ple who have so far test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 in this coun­try.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi’s hope to have lit­i­ga­tion be­fore the Ju­di­cia­ry to be­gin the process of re­leas­ing some non-vi­o­lent in­mates due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic did not ful­ly ma­te­ri­alise Fri­day.

Bar­bers and oth­ers of­fer­ing “beau­ti­fi­ca­tion” ser­vices to clients at home should stop do­ing so as they’re putting peo­ple at risk. And fun-lovers al­so risk a $50,000 fine and pos­si­ble jail if they con­tin­ue go­ing to beach­es, rivers, streams and springs be­fore April 15, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said Fri­day.

The Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est COVID-19 mea­sure has man­dat­ed that bars, church­es and sim­i­lar places, as well as air and sea­ports re­main closed un­til April 30. And taxis and bus­es must con­tin­ue car­ry­ing half pas­sen­ger loads un­til then al­so.

The Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment has es­tab­lished three sep­a­rate iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ties to house pos­i­tive COVID-19 pa­tients in To­ba­go.

In its lat­est up­date Sat­ur­day, the Min­istry of Health con­firmed the fig­ure, not­ing that some 736 peo­ple had now been test­ed for the virus. The num­ber of deaths re­mained at six while one pa­tient has so far been dis­charged.

Fif­teen days af­ter 78-year-old Zori­da Wahid Khan re­turned to her home in Queens, New York, af­ter va­ca­tion­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, she test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19.

The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is con­demn­ing Cab­i­net over the de­lay on the ap­proval of the pro­posed pan­dem­ic leave an­nounced by Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus in March.

Some 14 To­ba­go health­care work­ers who are di­rect­ly in­ter­fac­ing with COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients are cur­rent­ly be­ing housed at an undis­closed fa­cil­i­ty at Sig­nal Hill, ac­cord­ing to Med­ical Chief of Staff Dr Vic­tor Wheel­er.

A Min­istry of Health map dis­play­ing the com­mu­ni­ties from which con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es came has al­so re­vealed how easy it is for those per­sons, as well as peo­ple they may have come in­to con­tact with, to spread the virus across the coun­try.