Ag Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Den­nis Pul­chan is cur­rent­ly prepar­ing a list of pris­on­ers who are most like­ly to be re­leased as a mea­sure to min­imise a pos­si­ble out­break of the COVID-19 virus with­in the prison sys­tem. How­ev­er, Pul­chan said last evening he would not have a to­tal just yet as he is still com­plet­ing his re­search.

Peo­ple who are cur­rent­ly out­side Trinidad and To­ba­go should stay out to pre­vent a sec­ond or a pos­si­ble third wave of COVID- 19 cas­es, says Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Dr Joy St John.

The heads of pris­ons across the Caribbean have tak­en a de­ci­sion to re­lease spe­cif­ic pris­on­ers to re­duce the prison pop­u­la­tion in light of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The num­ber of peo­ple now al­lowed to gath­er in pub­lic spaces was re­duced from 10 to five yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing an amend­ment to the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance gov­ern­ing the “Stay-at-Home” mea­sures to com­bat the spread of COVID-19.

All vis­its at all of the na­tion’s pris­ons were sus­pend­ed un­til fur­ther no­tice with im­me­di­ate ef­fect from yes­ter­day as a mea­sure to safe­guard against the spread of COVID-19.

With the ma­jor­i­ty of T&T’s pop­u­la­tion in iso­la­tion for at least the next two weeks, two NGOs are call­ing for mech­a­nisms to be put in place to treat with an ex­pect­ed in­crease in in­ci­dences of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

East­er is one of the most sen­ti­men­tal times on the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar. But this year, the pomp and cer­e­mo­ny which usu­al­ly ac­com­pa­nies the oc­ca­sion will have to be whit­tled down in or­der to ad­here to the Stay-at-Home reg­u­la­tions im­ple­ment­ed to pre­vent the fur­ther spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says it is too soon for Trinidad and To­ba­go to think about life af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, not­ing the coun­try’s fo­cus right now has to re­main on flat­ten­ing the curve.

Since his hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, many of his fam­i­ly, friends and devo­tees are now scared that they too may have con­tract­ed the virus.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says an up­dat­ed ver­sion of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance will make it much sim­pler for or­di­nary cit­i­zens to un­der­stand the leg­is­la­tion meant to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween es­sen­tial and non-es­sen­tial work­ers, as the coun­try will be par­tial­ly shut down when the or­der to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19 kicks in at mid­night Sun­day.

The num­ber of lo­cal deaths at­trib­uted to the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) has risen to three.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says the Stay-at-Home or­der is not meant to cre­ate pan­ic nor con­fine peo­ple to their homes, as was the case with a cur­few dur­ing an SoE. Rather, he says it is meant lim­it­ing one’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right so a greater good can be achieved.