Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­nounced ad­just­ments to the COVID-19 re­stric­tions, in­clud­ing a full re­turn of pub­lic ser­vants to work from Mon­day, and the re­open­ing of gyms, places of wor­ship, cin­e­mas and mem­bers’ clubs with some caveats.

How­ev­er, the an­nounce­ment brought con­tin­ued dis­ap­point­ment for restau­rants own­ers and bar op­er­a­tors who have been told that they will have to wait at least an­oth­er two weeks be­fore any con­sid­er­a­tion can be giv­en to them re­open­ing in full. No im­me­di­ate con­ces­sions were made for in-house din­ing at bars and restau­rants. For now, restau­rants and bars will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate take­away ser­vices on­ly. Dr Row­ley said this cat­e­go­ry car­ries the great­est amount of dif­fi­cul­ty due to the na­ture of the be­hav­iour of peo­ple go­ing to bars and restau­rants.

Ac­cord­ing to the PM, in jus­ti­fy­ing his de­ci­sion, "Al­co­hol has a way of mak­ing sen­si­ble peo­ple act in a less than sen­si­ble way."

Mean­while, pub­lic groups of no more than ten peo­ple re­main in place.

The prime min­is­ter made the an­nounce­ment at a news con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day at the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary Fa­cil­i­ty, To­ba­go.

Row­ley, who cau­tioned against "com­pla­cen­cy and tired­ness" with ob­serv­ing the safe­ty reg­u­la­tions, urged the na­tion not to mis­take this eas­ing as to­tal re­moval of the reg­u­la­tions as it could again re­sult in a su­per spread­ing of the virus.

The PM said the main threat as­so­ci­at­ed with the COVID-19 virus was the gath­er­ing of peo­ple. Lim­it­ing per­son­al in­ter­ac­tions is the most ef­fec­tive method of re­duc­ing and elim­i­nat­ing in­fec­tion rates, he said.

The PM said he re­cent­ly lost a close friend and neigh­bour to COVID-19 and that brought the mes­sage home to him per­son­al­ly. "It’s more than just a num­ber, it’s more than just a name when you are di­rect­ly af­fect­ed," he said.

Row­ley said while the na­tion’s bor­ders will re­main closed for a bit longer, the au­thor­i­ties had in­creased ef­forts to repa­tri­ate na­tion­als who re­mained strand­ed abroad.

Mean­while, he spoke of the im­proved mea­sures to “tag” peo­ple who are re­turn­ing as he said they now pos­sessed the nec­es­sary tech­nol­o­gy to re­mote­ly mon­i­tor those who would be placed in quar­an­tine and to en­sure they ad­hered to the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions and di­rec­tives to re­main iso­lat­ed.

A com­mit­tee com­pris­ing the Min­is­ter of Health, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will look at im­ple­ment­ing mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware that can re­mote­ly mon­i­tor peo­ple who come in­to the coun­try.

"The tech­nol­o­gy now is al­lowed to have per­sons mon­i­tored at home and their vi­tals mon­i­tored by the health de­part­ment to see whether, in fact, they are symp­to­matic of the virus," the PM said.

Com­mend­ing the health au­thor­i­ties for im­ple­ment­ing safe­ty mea­sures from the on­set as he said this had placed T&T in a more sta­ble po­si­tion when com­pared to oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, the PM added that while the coun­try’s in­fec­tion rate had plateaued, he was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the in­fec­tion rate from repa­tri­at­ed peo­ple which was es­ti­mat­ed to be around 11 per cent.

When the is­sue of chil­dren be­ing at home and re­quir­ing parental su­per­vi­sion was raised, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment could not un­der­take that cost and he ad­vised peo­ple to speak with their re­spec­tive su­per­vi­sors.

PM's an­nounce­ments

*All church­es will be open for ser­vices no more than an hour at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty. Mem­bers will have to al­so ob­serve so­cial dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols.

*The pub­lic ser­vice will be out in full ca­pac­i­ty. Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries, man­agers and su­per­vi­sors will have to en­sure that “work­place dis­tanc­ing” is ob­served in ad­di­tion to prop­er sani­ti­sa­tion and no con­gre­gat­ing in groups.

*Gyms can re­sume op­er­a­tions, how­ev­er, at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty from 6 am-10 pm dai­ly.

*Casi­nos, cin­e­mas, the­atres and Mem­bers Clubs can re­sume op­er­a­tions at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty no food and drinks al­lowed from 8 am to 10 pm.

*Beach­es along the coun­try’s coast­lines are now open but this does not in­clude rivers or ponds.

*Ho­tels and guest­hous­es can al­so now open pools to their guests.

*Day­cares and schools re­main closed for the time. Ter­tiary and train­ing in­sti­tutes that pro­vide train­ing for prac­ti­cal pro­grammes, such as labs and flight train­ing schools that can­not be done on­line, can al­so re­sume once an ex­emp­tion is grant­ed by the Min­istry of Health to do so.