Busi­ness lead­ers be­lieve that a sec­ond COVID-19 re­lat­ed lock­down could be "dis­as­trous" for T&T. Af­ter los­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions be­tween March to June, Jai Lelad­hars­ingh, co­or­di­na­tor, Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), heads of busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions and mem­bers are brac­ing for rough days ahead.

As T&T record­ed its 13th COVID-19 death, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is call­ing on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to de­sist from har­bour­ing di­vi­sive­ness fol­low­ing Face­book posts by new­ly elect­ed Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit stat­ing that the spike in cas­es was the Gov­ern­ment's kar­ma.
Mo­hit wrote: "COVID has turned on the PNM. Kar­ma." 
PNM pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing said giv­en the in­creas­ing case­load that the pub­lic health sys­tem was over­see­ing, it is time for the coun­try to com­bat the virus as a unit­ed front. Leza­ma-Lee Sing said Mo­hit's sum­ma­tion that the COVID-19 spike was kar­ma was un­for­tu­nate and "down­right reck­less."

There has been an­oth­er COVID re­lat­ed death, bring­ing the num­ber to 13. In a press re­lease is­sued this morn­ing, the Min­istry of Health stat­ed the pa­tient is an adult male.

There are 39 new COVID-19 pos­i­tive cas­es in T&T, as of to­day, Fri­day 21 Au­gust 2020, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

This af­ter it was re­vealed he had had con­tact with some­one on elec­tion night who test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

The Min­istry of Health pro­vides the fol­low­ing clin­i­cal up­date as of the morn­ing of Thurs­day 20th Au­gust, 2020:

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness, and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment, three ad­di­tion­al per­sons test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of cas­es to 25.

Caribbean Air­lines has be­gun to op­er­ate a re­duced sched­ule on the do­mes­tic air bridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go in re­sponse to the new COVID-19 re­stric­tions is­sued by Gov­ern­ment, over the week­end.

The in­ter-is­land fer­ries are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue their op­er­a­tions dai­ly, but at re­duced ca­pac­i­ty, fol­low­ing the lat­est COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions and re­stric­tions is­sued by Gov­ern­ment, over the week­end.

T&TEC work­ers have been placed on a ro­ta­tion sys­tem, start­ing to­day (Wednes­day), af­ter one of their work­ers in the South Dis­tri­b­u­tion Cen­tre test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 last week.

Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed has ad­vised that come We­dens­day (Au­gust 19), the do­mes­tic air bridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go will op­er­ate on a re­duced sched­ule.

As the hour drew clos­er for the new phase of COVID-19 re­stric­tions to kick in, bar own­ers in South Trinidad gave free beers and cut­ters to loy­al pa­trons.