Khamal Georges

Bar­ring any ma­jor change to the lo­cal COVID-19 trend, mas­quer­aders will be chip­ping in the streets for Car­ni­val 2021, Cul­ture Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed yes­ter­day.

Af­ter be­ing se­vere­ly re­strict­ed for months dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, mas lovers have been fear­ing they may not get the es­cape they are look­ing for­ward to next year. But well-placed sources in­volved in the plan­ning process said Car­ni­val 2021 will not be can­celled but in a worst-case sce­nario, re­stric­tions may be placed on in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors, who ac­count for the ma­jor­i­ty of ar­rivals dur­ing the sea­son, if the pan­dem­ic is still a ma­jor con­cern. It means the event may on­ly be put on for the do­mes­tic or re­gion­al mar­ket and will es­sen­tial­ly be scaled down sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pared to pre­vi­ous years. Rev­ellers from the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom and Eu­rope may thus not be al­lowed in­to T&T to par­tic­i­pate in the fes­tiv­i­ties. Sources say they are al­so mon­i­tor­ing the Ja­maica sce­nario since it has been more lib­er­al with its bor­der mea­sures.

Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that a lo­cal or re­gion­al car­ni­val is “on the ta­ble.”

“We know that Car­ni­val is not in­tend­ed to be can­celled, once things con­tin­ue on the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry,” she said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

“The form of it—lo­cal, re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al­—is de­pen­dent on fac­tors we can­not yet de­ter­mine.”

But Gads­by-Dol­ly of­fered some wig­gle room on the de­ci­sion, say­ing there are mul­ti­ple con­sid­er­a­tions and all of it would de­pend on de­ci­sions tak­en with the coun­try’s bor­ders, pub­lic gath­er­ings and what hap­pens glob­al­ly with the pan­dem­ic.

“If our bor­ders are re­strict­ed in any way that over­laps with Car­ni­val, cer­tain­ly it will be re­strict­ed to lo­cal or re­gion­al.”  

But how will so­cial dis­tanc­ing and oth­er COVID-19 pre­ven­tion mea­sures be fol­lowed dur­ing a mas­sive street fes­ti­val?

Gads­by-Dol­ly and oth­er sources say T&T will have to learn from oth­er car­ni­vals held in the com­ing months, in­clud­ing Mi­a­mi and Ja­maica car­ni­vals which are sched­uled to hap­pen.

“Car­ni­val is a con­tact event, so we will have to bal­ance that,” Gads­by-Dol­ly as­sured.

 An­oth­er op­tion is lim­it­ing the size of crowds at fetes, which would sig­nif­i­cant­ly scale down the num­ber of peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in such events in the lead up to the two days of rev­el­ry.

“From a prob­a­bil­i­ty stand­point, we stand a bet­ter chance keep­ing our eggs in the re­gion­al bas­ket,” one source fa­mil­iar with the dis­cus­sions told the Trinidad Guardian.

The source added that once the med­ical ad­vice is pos­i­tive, “it seems nat­ur­al that some­thing would hap­pen even if it’s to the ex­clu­sion of the ex­ter­nals,” the source said.

Car­ni­val 2020 was held de­spite con­cerns raised by some cit­i­zens about the teen prospect of COVID-19 hit­ting our shores.

But ac­cord­ing to the Cul­ture Min­is­ter, in the same way the risk fac­tors were con­sid­ered then, “the cal­cu­la­tion of that risk will be much more se­ri­ous” for 2021. The Min­istries of Health and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, she said, would play a ma­jor role in any car­ni­val dis­cus­sions.

She ac­knowl­edged that re­stric­tions on vis­i­tors will af­fect large bands sig­nif­i­cant­ly since they have sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­na­tion­al fol­low­ing. But, she said, some lo­cal stake­hold­ers are al­ready imag­in­ing a sce­nario that gives them a lo­cal car­ni­val.

“A lot de­pends on what hap­pens with the bor­ders and what hap­pens with pub­lic gath­er­ings. Those two de­pend on what hap­pens glob­al­ly. To some ex­tent, it is out or our hands,” she said.