A group of cit­i­zens cur­rent­ly strand­ed in the Unit­ed States has sued the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, over its re­fusal to dis­close the cri­te­ria be­ing used to grant trav­el ex­emp­tions un­der on­go­ing COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions. 

Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA) head Lance Mot­ley is ad­vis­ing par­ents to keep their chil­dren at home once a mem­ber of the house­hold is ill.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is mov­ing on sev­er­al re­ports of sus­pect­ed il­le­gal for­eign­ers housed in parts of the coun­try, in­clud­ing South Trinidad­—and he’s re­in­forced that any T&T na­tion­al as­sist­ing such sit­u­a­tions will al­so be charged.

With­in four days, the coun­try has de­tect­ed three lo­cal­ly trans­mit­ted cas­es of COVID-19 with un­known ori­gins.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has again knocked Gov­ern­ment over its han­dling of repa­tri­at­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens strand­ed abroad by the lock­down of the bor­ders due to COVID-19, liken­ing this treat­ment to slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship.

A dozen Ramish and Leela Su­per­mar­ket Lim­it­ed staff mem­bers who have been test­ed COVID-19 af­ter pos­si­bly com­ing in­to con­tact with one of the coun­try’s lat­est pa­tients have been told to stay home al­though the busi­ness re-opens on Sat­ur­day.

Vi­rol­o­gy spe­cial­ist at the School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Christo­pher Oura, says the re­cent cas­es of COVID-19 which could be com­mu­ni­ty spread are of great con­cern and Gov­ern­ment must move quick­ly to find out where the virus orig­i­nat­ed.

Sev­er­al San Juan busi­ness­es were put on alert while some closed al­to­geth­er yes­ter­day, as the move­ments of COVID-19 pa­tient 139 and her re­lat­ed con­tacts con­tin­ued to be tracked by Min­istry of Health through­out the com­mu­ni­ty.

Faced with a pos­si­ble com­mu­ni­ty spread of COVID-19, in­de­pen­dent pae­di­a­tri­cian Dr David Bratt be­lieves all pub­lic schools should stay closed if the Gov­ern­ment fails to pro­vide prop­er pro­tec­tive equip­ment for stu­dents and teach­ers.

The clock is tick­ing for the Min­istry of Health af­ter fears over the lo­cal trans­mis­sion of COVID-19 con­tin­ued to grow yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment that Re­pub­lic Bank’s West Mall branch was forced to close be­cause the daugh­ter of an em­ploy­ee was the lat­est per­son to con­tract the virus in T&T.

Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics Lim­it­ed was forced to shut down two of its Port-of-Spain out­lets for sani­ti­sa­tion yes­ter­day af­ter the Min­istry of Health con­firmed that some­one liv­ing in the house­hold of one of T&T’s lat­est COVID-19 cas­es vis­it­ed the out­lets.

A state­ment by the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day said that one of the cas­es was im­port­ed from Cana­da.