The bor­ders of T&T are set to re­open on Ju­ly 17. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was the bear­er of that good news on Sat­ur­day at the COVID-19 up­date at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. Row­ley said that the bor­ders would be open to both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed cit­i­zens. The coun­try would al­so al­low en­try to vac­ci­nat­ed non-na­tion­als, but un­vac­ci­nat­ed non-na­tion­als are not go­ing to be al­lowed in the coun­try at this time.

The bor­ders have been shut, ex­cept through au­tho­rised trav­el ex­emp­tions, for more than a year.

This news now spells re­lief to the thou­sands left strand­ed since the bor­der clo­sure last March. For over a year na­tion­als have been util­is­ing the ex­emp­tion process to get home and ei­ther stay­ing in state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties or pay­ing to stay at se­lect­ed ho­tels for 14 days.

In that time, cit­i­zens have been clam­our­ing to re­turn home. Last year Ju­ly, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fa­mous­ly com­pared the pro­tract­ed lock­out to slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship, say­ing then that Row­ley had made cit­i­zens na­tion­less.

There have been suc­ces­sive up­dates about the num­ber of lo­cals strand­ed abroad since March but the Gov­ern­ment re­laxed the re­stric­tions some­what for the Christ­mas pe­ri­od last year and by De­cem­ber some 17,211 peo­ple made ex­emp­tion re­quests to en­ter T&T. Of that fig­ure, there were 9,557 ex­emp­tions grant­ed, leav­ing more than 7,654 peo­ple, res­i­dents and non-res­i­dents, still out­side, as T&T's bor­ders re­mained closed at that time

"This is a ma­jor de­vel­op­ment at a time," Row­ley said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, the Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to open the bor­ders. "The ex­act date in Ju­ly, we ex­pect Sat­ur­day, Ju­ly 17," he said. The coun­try would re­turn to sched­uled trav­el ser­vices.

Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment's open bor­ders would recog­nise three cat­e­gories of peo­ple: vac­ci­nat­ed na­tion­als of T&T, un­vac­ci­nat­ed cit­i­zens of T&T, and oth­er un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple.

"Vac­ci­nat­ed cit­i­zens of T&T with a neg­a­tive PCR test, 72 hours or less, would be al­lowed to come in and go home," he said.

A per­son who is not vac­ci­nat­ed and wished to en­ter the coun­try, must go in­to state-su­per­vised quar­an­tine for 14 days and must be able to show a neg­a­tive PCR test.

Un­vac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren com­ing in with vac­ci­nat­ed par­ents would be al­lowed to go home with­out any quar­an­tine.

"Non-na­tion­als of T&T who are not vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19 would not at this time be al­lowed to en­ter T&T," Row­ley said. The vac­cines must be ap­proved by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) and they are free to en­ter the coun­try two weeks af­ter their sec­ond shot.

Quar­an­tine break­ers, he said, would be fined.

"Any per­son com­ing in­to this coun­try and de­cide to play fast and loose with our quar­an­tine sys­tem and en­try re­quire­ments would face the full brunt of the law," he said.

Just days ago the na­tion­al car­ri­er, Caribbean Air­lines re­vealed plans to cut staff num­bers in­clud­ing pi­lots but the Prime Min­is­ter said that the trimmed staff would be able to han­dle the work­load now that bor­ders are open­ing. He said that CAL main­tained some 80 per cent of its staff.