The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­er’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT) have re-stat­ed their com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing that con­sumers con­tin­ue to re­ceive high qual­i­ty goods and at af­ford­able prices, de­spite the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

(CNN) — Drug­mak­er Pfiz­er said Mon­day an ear­ly look at da­ta from its coro­n­avirus vac­cine shows it is more than 90% ef­fec­tive -- a much bet­ter than ex­pect­ed ef­fi­ca­cy if the trend con­tin­ues.

A video show­ing in­mates of the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) be­ing moved to a cor­doned-off area of the fa­cil­i­ty is now in the hands of the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Den­nis Pul­chan who has ex­pressed con­cern that it was “il­le­gal­ly trans­mit­ted.”

Two more fa­cil­i­ties would be added to the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem by Fri­day. Min­istry of Health Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards said at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence. The new fa­cil­i­ties would in­crease the sys­tem’s ca­pac­i­ty from 1,551 beds to 1,651. One would be at the Kapok ho­tel for repa­tri­at­ed na­tion­als and has a bed ca­pac­i­ty of 90. The oth­er fa­cil­i­ty be­ing brought on-board would be a cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty in To­ba­go with a bed ca­pac­i­ty of 10. Dr Ab­dool-Richards said the sys­tem is healthy enough to han­dle any surge in COVID-19 cas­es.

Fol­low­ing the eas­ing of re­stric­tions and re­open­ing of cer­tain sec­tors of the econ­o­my two weeks ago, med­ical of­fi­cials will be care­ful­ly mon­i­tor­ing vi­ral-re­lat­ed da­ta with­in the next two weeks to de­ter­mine if there were any ad­verse ef­fects as a re­sult of the in­creased move­ment of peo­ple.

The lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health is con­firm­ing 11 new pos­i­tive cas­es of COVID-19, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es in the coun­try to 606 pa­tients.

State quar­an­tine or state-su­per­vised quar­an­tine for sev­en days for re­turn­ing T&T na­tion­als is one of sev­er­al changes to the COVID-19 Ex­emp­tion Pol­i­cy, which were an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Stu­art Young MP, yes­ter­day.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), Bri­an Lewis, is urg­ing all sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, sport ad­min­is­tra­tors and ath­letes to ad­here close­ly to the health and safe­ty guide­lines and pro­to­cols is­sued by the Min­istry of Health, to re­duce the spread of COVID-19.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says his con­fi­dence in the cit­i­zen­ry to ad­here to pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions has not been mis­placed. And he is en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to ex­er­cise cau­tion and re­straint as he an­nounced a fur­ther eas­ing of re­stric­tions this week.

Pe­ter George Jr, the own­er of Trent Restau­rants Ltd, de­scribes the Gov­ern­ment's lat­est move to lift some of the re­stric­tions on in-house din­ing as a “pos­i­tive step.”

Stu­dents and na­tion­als who have been stuck out­side T&T since the coun­try closed its bor­ders in March to con­tain the spread of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic may get an ear­ly Christ­mas gift in the form of an ex­emp­tion to re­turn home.