SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says since the State of Emer­gency was im­ple­ment­ed last week­end, more cit­i­zens have been leav­ing their homes dur­ing the non-cur­few hours. How­ev­er, he is urg­ing cit­i­zens to de­sist from this type of be­hav­iour, say­ing this is ex­act­ly what led to the re­cent surge and what the SoE is meant to pre­vent.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the po­lice have ob­served that more peo­ple are out on a dai­ly ba­sis.

“That is to­tal­ly go­ing to de­feat the val­ue and the pur­pose of the State of Emer­gency, be­cause hav­ing a vir­tu­al ghost town dur­ing the night and then per­sons are then com­ing out en masse dur­ing the day, it means that the same con­cerns that we have about the virus spread­ing will just be in­ten­si­fied dur­ing the day pe­ri­od,” Grif­fith said.

Since the start of May, the virus has rav­aged the coun­try, with hun­dreds of new cas­es be­ing record­ed dai­ly and deaths in the dou­ble dig­its be­com­ing the new norm, re­sult­ing in the health sec­tor be­com­ing over­whelmed.

As a re­sult of this trend dur­ing what is the third wave of the virus in T&T, the State of Emer­gency, which in­cludes a cur­few from 9 pm to 5 am, was im­ple­ment­ed by the Gov­ern­ment as a mea­sure to curb the spread. All busi­ness­es, ex­cept banks, su­per­mar­kets, phar­ma­cies and mar­ket stalls, are sup­posed to be closed since they are deemed non-es­sen­tial un­der the SoE.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the lock­down mea­sures, which were orig­i­nal­ly due to ex­pire yes­ter­day (May 23), will con­tin­ue to Ju­ly 4. The Gov­ern­ment is al­so go­ing to Par­lia­ment to­day to ex­tend the SoE to a full three-month pe­ri­od, al­though Row­ley said it would not nec­es­sar­i­ly be im­ple­ment­ed for the en­tire pe­ri­od.

Pub­lic health of­fi­cials have been plead­ing with cit­i­zens to stay at home for the past sev­er­al weeks, say­ing that lim­it­ing in­ter­ac­tion be­tween fam­i­ly mem­bers and strangers lim­it the like­li­hood of the virus find­ing hosts to mul­ti­ply and spread. 

Po­lice of­fi­cers have al­so been on con­stant pa­trols try­ing to en­force the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions dur­ing the day and the SoE at night.

But yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the num­ber of peo­ple out­side dur­ing the day now far ex­ceeds the num­bers they had seen be­fore the SoE was im­ple­ment­ed. As such, he said the po­lice are go­ing to step up their game to deal with this ac­tiv­i­ty.

“We con­tin­ue to ask per­sons, you should on­ly be out if it is you are pro­vid­ing an es­sen­tial ser­vice as an em­ploy­ee or you are go­ing out to ac­quire the prod­ucts from an es­sen­tial ser­vice. The po­lice will be in­ten­si­fy­ing our pa­trols, our vis­i­bil­i­ty, through pos­si­ble road­blocks and oth­er things,” Grif­fith said.

“I do not want to in­con­ve­nience those who have to pro­vide an es­sen­tial ser­vice or em­ploy­ees of es­sen­tial ser­vices but we are see­ing the num­bers have dras­ti­cal­ly in­creased com­pared to pre-SoE.”

Grif­fith said the po­lice will al­so be in­creas­ing their spot checks at banks, su­per­mar­kets and phar­ma­cies to en­sure that the pub­lic health guide­lines are be­ing ad­hered to. If busi­ness­es are in breach of the reg­u­la­tions, he said they will be shut down for the day.