Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The dai­ly av­er­age of COVID-19 cas­es has de­creased dur­ing the cur­rent pe­ri­od of re­stric­tions and the Min­istry of Health is hop­ing the trend con­tin­ues to the end of the week. If it does, this could mean some respite for bars, restau­rants and re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions come Sat­ur­day when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounces the way for­ward as the cur­rent health re­stric­tions ex­pire.

Speak­ing dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the lat­est fig­ures for last week in­di­cate a dai­ly case av­er­age of around 30, down from the pre­vi­ous week’s cas­es.

“Last week’s av­er­age of about 30 to 32 per day, the week be­fore that we had, if you re­call, we had some­where around 52 cas­es to 53 cas­es. So there has been a re­duc­tion. We’re hop­ing to see that trend con­tin­u­ing to the rest of the week and we’d have a bet­ter idea on Sat­ur­day there­abouts what hap­pens this par­tic­u­lar week,” Paras­ram ex­plained.

When the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced the cur­rent pe­ri­od of re­stric­tions at a COVID-19 press con­fer­ence on Oc­to­ber 10, he in­di­cat­ed that some le­nien­cy to op­er­ate could be giv­en to some sec­tors once there was no sig­nif­i­cant spike in cas­es over the pe­ri­od.

“If there is no sig­nif­i­cant up­ward tick in our con­cen­tra­tion of lev­els now, by the 24th of this month- we should be able to make the changes that would bring back ac­tiv­i­ties in­to the two ar­eas I just men­tioned- church­es and oth­er places of wor­ship and we can do a bit more for bars and restau­rants,” Row­ley said then.

“Hope­ful­ly by the end of the month, cer­tain­ly by the 24th, which is two Sat­ur­days from now, when I will join you again and hope­ful­ly if what we have man­aged to ac­com­plish in the last month which is to dull the spike and see a down­turn in the num­bers then we should be able to add a bit more in these...ar­eas which I’ve men­tioned.”

On Tues­day, sev­er­al re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions told Guardian Me­dia they be­lieved the time was right for re­li­gious gath­er­ings to re­sume to some ex­tent. They ac­knowl­edged that ser­vices won’t be able to im­me­di­ate­ly re­sume un­der pre­vi­ous op­er­at­ing con­di­tions but said they be­lieve the guide­lines put out by the min­istry ear­li­er this year would be suf­fi­cient to en­sure the safe­ty of pa­trons.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Bar­keep­ers and Own­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BOATT) pres­i­dent Teron Mo­han said bars are ready to re­open and have al­ready put mech­a­nisms in place to en­force the pub­lic health guide­lines.

“The bars - we are ready. Our af­fil­i­ate restau­rants too - we are ready. We are pre­pared to re­open. We are pre­pared to fa­cil­i­tate our cus­tomers again and we will be ex­er­cis­ing the COVID guide­lines and pre­ven­tions to its fullest ex­tent so as not to have to face a sce­nario for a third time com­ing around,” he said.

“So now we’re just keep­ing hope­ful and keep­ing pos­i­tive for Sat­ur­day’s ad­dress.”