Of­fi­cial fig­ures, in­clud­ing vot­er turnout, will be re­leased by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) but PNM To­ba­go of­fi­cials and UNC’s chair­man yes­ter­day re­port­ed low turnouts in To­ba­go and Trinidad elec­tions re­spec­tive­ly.

The lo­cal gov­ern­ment bye-elec­tion in Cunu­pia yes­ter­day to elect a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to re­place for­mer coun­cil­lor Van­dana Mo­hit went off with­out a hitch.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly by-elec­tions have low-vot­er turnouts and this year was no dif­fer­ent at the polls in Point Fortin.

Vot­ers trick­led in the elec­toral dis­trict of Ari­ma Cen­tral for yes­ter­day’s bye-elec­tion yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The Min­istry of Health has con­firmed 17 new COVID-19 in­fec­tions from sam­ples col­lect­ed be­tween Jan­u­ary 22 and 25 ac­cord­ing to its dai­ly up­date yes­ter­day.

Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Dr David Lee said he an­tic­i­pat­ed no ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in Mon­day’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Bye-Elec­tion but ad­mit­ted that any­thing was pos­si­ble.

No ma­jor hic­cups were re­port­ed dur­ing yes­ter­day’s bye-elec­tion for the Hin­dus­tan/St Mary’s elec­toral dis­trict but the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress was or­dered to re­lo­cate some of its mock sta­tions af­ter they were deemed to close to the polling sta­tion.

An ed­u­ca­tor, a dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an, a long-serv­ing pub­lic ser­vant, a min­is­ter, a com­mu­ni­ty and so­cial ac­tivist, a sports­man, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, a lov­ing hus­band, and a fa­ther.

This coun­try has bro­kered an agree­ment for the for­eign af­fairs min­is­ters of Venezuela and Guyana to meet and swift­ly re­solve a dis­pute over the re­cent de­ten­tion of two Guyanese fish­ing ves­sels and their crews.

Just over 100 peo­ple, with most ac­cord­ing to po­lice from “up­scale ar­eas of North Trinidad and from well-known fam­i­lies,” were charged for breach­ing the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance reg­u­la­tions af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) and West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force (WDTF) swooped down on the pop­u­lar Res­i­dence night­club in One Wood­brook Place just be­fore mid­night on Sun­day.

Po­lice have dis­trib­uted over $4 mil­lion worth of fixed penal­ty no­tices to cit­i­zens for fail­ing to wear face masks while in pub­lic since the man­date’s im­ple­men­ta­tion.

The Min­istry of Health has record­ed 17 new COVID cas­es bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es to 323. The death toll stands at 134. There are cur­rent­ly 40 pa­tients in the hos­pi­tal, two of which are in ICU. One per­son has been dis­charged from hos­pi­tal while there have been 17 re­cov­ered com­mu­ni­ty cas­es.