Two days be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, an ar­son­ist set fire to the Min­istry of Health in the ear­ly hours of Sat­ur­day morn­ing and left a mes­sage say­ing it was be­cause of the Min­istry’s role in the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The fire start­ed in around 1.30 am on the low­est floor of the build­ing af­ter at least one per­son threw a flam­ma­ble ob­ject in­to it.

Fire of­fi­cers from the Wright­son Road sta­tion re­spond­ed and spent sev­er­al hours try­ing to con­tain the blaze which was con­tained on one floor. A se­nior fire of­fi­cer said ear­ly in­ves­ti­ga­tions point­ed to­wards ar­son.

Be­fore set­ting the fire, the per­son/s wrote on the wall at the back of the build­ing with red spray paint, "COVID 19 IS ALL ABOUT THE NEW WORLD OR­DER. STOP IT NOW. #THERE­SIS­TANCE".

Po­lice be­lieve cam­eras around the build­ing will help them to de­ter­mine who set the build­ing on fire.

Around 2 am, the lit­tle ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic in Port-of-Spain was blocked by po­lice from head­ing north on Ed­ward Street just af­ter Duke Street and from head­ing west along Park Street from Rich­mond Street.

Per­sis­tent rain­fall kept on­look­ers away, as on­ly se­cu­ri­ty guards from two near­by build­ings ob­served as fire­fight­ers worked to stop the blaze, which con­tin­ue in­to the morn­ing.

Of­fi­cers had to break a glass in the build­ing and used oxy­gen tanks be­cause of the thick smoke em­a­nat­ing from in­side.

One wit­ness, Mar­tin Hunter, told Guardian Me­dia that he was the first to smell the smoke while hav­ing a meal out­side Sco­tia­bank, one block away on the cor­ner of Park and Rich­mond streets. How­ev­er, he said by the time he reached the scene, he did not see who car­ried out the ar­son.

The Min­istry of Health has been at the fore­front of the COVID-19 fight over the last few months, and while it has re­ceived glow­ing trib­utes in sev­er­al quar­ters, it has had its de­trac­tors.

It is re­spon­si­ble for the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nances which have im­posed re­stric­tions to pre­vent the spread of the virus that has al­ready claimed over 724,000 lives across the world.

As of ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Trinidad and To­ba­go's death toll from the virus was eight out of 225 peo­ple who test­ed pos­i­tive so far.

The Min­istry had an­nounced on Fri­day that 15 peo­ple had new­ly con­tract­ed the virus, of which 12 re­quired epi­demi­o­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions to de­ter­mine the ori­gins.

The Min­istry sched­uled a reg­u­lar news con­fer­ence for 11 am Sat­ur­day, to give up­dates on the virus and to an­nounce any fur­ther mea­sures that it deems nec­es­sary to con­tain it.

At the time of this re­port (4 am) there was no in­di­ca­tion as yet on whether that news con­fer­ence would still be on.

We will bring you fur­ther in­for­ma­tion as we get it.