Raphael John-Lall

Roger Hug­gins who works as a bar­ber in Wes­ley's Bar­ber Sa­lon in Wood­brook es­ti­mates that they lost about 60 to 70 per­cent of their usu­al cus­tomers yes­ter­day com­pared to oth­er Sat­ur­days be­cause of the coro­n­avirus scare.

He told the Guardian that the im­pact of the an­nounce­ment made on Thurs­day about T&T’s first coro­n­avirus case was im­me­di­ate on busi­ness, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter see­ing peo­ple’s re­ac­tions on so­cial me­dia with lines in front of the su­per­mar­kets.

Sat­ur­day is usu­al­ly their busiest day, he said. But yes­ter­day their busi­ness took a hit.

"Cus­tomers have ex­pressed gen­uine con­cern ask­ing what mea­sures are we putting in place to pro­tect them. One cus­tomer usu­al­ly comes in and waits un­til he gets his hair­cut en­gag­ing in the usu­al hearty bar­ber­shop con­ver­sa­tions but he, like oth­ers, called ask­ing for an ap­point­ment so he can come right in, get his hair­cut and leave im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Hig­gins said some of the mea­sures that they are us­ing to im­prove san­i­ta­tion to com­bat the dis­ease in­clude putting gloves on while cut­ting hair, us­ing hand sani­tis­er, Lysol spray­ing of equip­ment and sur­round­ing ar­eas, not shak­ing hands and not tak­ing cus­tomers that are ill or cough­ing.