The Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo will be closed for one week.

A re­lease from the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions on Sat­ur­day said the move was in keep­ing with the ad­vice of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley who sug­gest­ed lim­it­ed ac­tiv­i­ty in pub­lic places to com­bat the spread of COVID-19 in T&T.

The Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T (ZSTT) will use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go in­to main­te­nance mode.

Dur­ing the sev­en-day pe­ri­od, the zoo's em­ploy­ees will op­er­ate on a re­vised shift sys­tem to en­sure that an­i­mals are fed and looked af­ter, and the fa­cil­i­ties are se­cured and sani­tised.

Main­te­nance work­ers will use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work in ar­eas usu­al­ly tra­versed by the pub­lic dur­ing open­ing hours and work on on­go­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al projects.

The ZSTT will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion with COVID-19 and pro­vide fur­ther an­nounce­ments as nec­es­sary.