Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says even with the jump in nov­el Coro­n­avirus cas­es from nine to 49, there is no drain on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­ist­ing health­care sys­tem.

Hours af­ter the pas­tor of the Bethel ‘The House of God’ in Freeport made the de­ci­sion to sus­pend ser­vices in­def­i­nite­ly and not pro­ceed with the planned wed­dings at the church’s com­pound to­day, they re­ceived a bomb threat.Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion reach­ing the Guardian Me­dia, some­time af­ter 3 pm yes­ter­day po­lice of­fi­cers re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that some­one had threat­ened “to blow the church up.”

With tears rolling down her cheeks, the daugh­ter of one of the pa­tients di­ag­nosed with the COVID-19 virus and ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal fell to her knees on the shoul­der of the high­way and prayed for her fa­ther to pull through on Sat­ur­day.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj says he nev­er threat­ened lit­i­ga­tion in a let­ter to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment to look in­to un­suit­able ac­com­mo­da­tions pro­vid­ed to the 68 peo­ple who were quar­an­tined in Ba­lan­dra af­ter re­turn­ing from a Caribbean cruise.

At the Ota­heite fish de­pot in south Trinidad, ven­dors say there has been a high­er de­mand for fish than usu­al. One of them, Ram­cha­ran Par­tap, said this is be­cause many peo­ple be­lieve eat­ing fish will boost their im­mune sys­tem.

On the heels of the Prime Min­is­ter’s call to lim­it gath­er­ings to ten peo­ple or less, the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) has closed ac­cess to the penin­su­la’s ma­jor beach­es at Mac­queripe, Williams Bay and Chagville.

Dai­ly life for Ba­lan­dra’s newest res­i­dents ap­peared to be qui­et and unas­sum­ing on Thurs­day morn­ing.

The ma­jor­i­ty of bars across the coun­try re­mained closed yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s warn­ing on Wednes­day that own­ers who fail to com­ply dur­ing the COVID-19 re­sponse risk los­ing their li­cences.

As one of the nat­ur­al won­ders of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Mara­cas Beach is a place peo­ple of­ten go to in or­der to for­get their wor­ries.

Scores of peo­ple gath­ered at the Bethel ‘The House of God’ church in Freeport on Thurs­day night for its an­nu­al memo­r­i­al ser­vice, de­spite in­struc­tions by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that there should be no more than ten peo­ple in pub­lic gath­er­ings.

A con­tact trac­ing un­der­tak­en on one of the coun­try’s nine com­firmed COVID-19 cas­es has re­vealed that the in­di­vid­ual had con­tact with 66 peo­ple while car­ry­ing the virus.

Caribbean Air­lines is en­sur­ing that they are ob­serv­ing all pro­to­cols re­lat­ed to the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) and "will con­tin­ue to work close­ly with port au­thor­i­ty health of­fi­cials to not on­ly safe­guard their crew but the wel­fare of pas­sen­gers."