Sev­er­al re­li­gious bod­ies have al­ready ap­proached the Gov­ern­ment for the sec­ond tranche of funds to pro­vide sup­port to needy fam­i­lies and mi­grants hit hard by the COVID-19 re­stric­tions, Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said yes­ter­day.

Days af­ter T&T stu­dents from Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica were repa­tri­at­ed, T&T med­ical stu­dents who are cur­rent­ly in Cu­ba are al­so seek­ing repa­tri­a­tion as they say life has be­come “un­bear­ably tough” for them.

While T&T stu­dents who were study­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Cave Hill cam­pus in Bar­ba­dos are re­lieved to be back home, they are un­hap­py with Caribbean Air­lines US$488 fee per tick­et to re­turn.

As the coun­try tem­porar­i­ly opened its bor­ders for some 1,000 na­tion­als to come home, the first batch of repa­tri­at­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens are grate­ful to be here; even if they may not be phys­i­cal­ly on home soil yet.

Al­though six repa­tri­at­ed cruise ship work­ers test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 over the week­end, this is not like­ly to dis­rupt the on­go­ing quar­an­tine of the oth­er 300 na­tion­als on board the En­chant­ment of Seas off T&T’s coast.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has said that T&T’s par­al­lel health sys­tem has reached its ca­pac­i­ty and for the next few weeks will not be able to take in any new pa­tients for COVID-19 re­lat­ed cas­es.

The UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus is the newest quar­an­tine cen­tre to be set up lo­cal­ly as 140 stu­dents re­turned from the UWI Mona Cam­pus in Ja­maica on Sat­ur­day.

“Hap­py, hope­ful, ex­cit­ed, ready to get this done with,” was how one of the 305 Roy­al Caribbean cruise work­ers de­scribed the mood on-board the En­chant­ment of the Seas now docked along­side the Cruise Ship Com­plex. The ves­sel is ex­pect­ed to re­main there for the next two weeks at least, as the work­ers will be quar­an­tined on board.

The de­ci­sions con­cern­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment were made with the best in­ter­est of the na­tion's stu­dents, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia said Fri­day.

A pro­fes­sion­al mariner, of San Fer­nan­do, who has been strand­ed in Bar­ba­dos for over two months due to the clo­sure of this coun­try’s bor­ders be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, is threat­en­ing to sue the State. 

As church­es pre­pare to re­sume pub­lic gath­er­ings with the lift­ing of COVID-19 re­stric­tions, a Chris­t­ian re­search group is call­ing for deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Gov­ern­ment.

Al­though the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion con­sult­ed with main stake­hold­ers in de­ter­min­ing the Au­gust 20 date for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA), some of them said yes­ter­day they would have pre­ferred the date ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed by Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia.