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.

Hun­dreds of cit­i­zens yes­ter­day seemed to dis­re­gard Gov­ern­ment’s ‘Stay-at-Home’ and so­cial dis­tanc­ing or­ders as they flocked to var­i­ous venues to con­duct ac­tiv­i­ty on day two of the dri­ve to fight of the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19).

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed he’s been test­ed for COVID-19 and the test re­sult was neg­a­tive. He gave the con­fir­ma­tion at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing up­dat­ing the coun­try on the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Cen­tral, Trinidad bar own­er has be­come the first per­son to be charged for break­ing the re­cent­ly-im­ple­ment­ed COVID-19 Pub­lic Health Act reg­u­la­tions.