Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

From Mon­day, un­vac­ci­nat­ed pa­trons will on­ly be al­lowed to ac­cess ser­vices through curb­side pick­up at TT Safe Zone busi­ness­es.

The word came from Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day, as he ex­plained that the goal of the ini­tia­tive is for every­one in­side the es­tab­lish­ments to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. 

“A Safe Zone, by con­cept, means any­one in­side of that zone — in a restau­rant — em­ploy­ee, own­er, a pa­tron, must be vac­ci­nat­ed,” Deyals­ingh said dur­ing the min­istry’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing.

“If the own­er of the prop­er­ty de­cides not to par­tic­i­pate in the Safe Zone, as per­tains now, they can do car­ry out (or) curb­side pick­up but if they want to do both, they can sim­ply have their un­vac­ci­nat­ed pa­tron col­lect their food curb­side, out­side.”

He said pa­trons are to be as­sured that every­one in the es­tab­lish­ment will be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. 

The Min­istry of Health launched the Safe Zone ini­tia­tive yes­ter­day.

The cer­tifi­cate re­quired for dis­play by busi­ness­es want­i­ng to be part of the pro­gramme was up­loaded to the min­istry’s web­site.

Deyals­ingh said all iden­ti­fied busi­ness­es have to do to be a part of the ini­tia­tive is down­load, print and dis­play the cer­tifi­cate at their es­tab­lish­ments, while ad­her­ing to the guide­lines. Any per­son who is not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed found at a Safe Zone will be li­able to a $5,000 fine, while the es­tab­lish­ment will be li­able to a $25,000 fine.

All em­ploy­ees are al­so re­quired to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed to qual­i­fy and op­er­ate in a safe zone. If an em­ploy­ee is tem­porar­i­ly un­able to get vac­ci­nat­ed for med­ical rea­sons, they can ap­ply for a med­ical de­fer­ral. If the em­ploy­ee is per­ma­nent­ly un­able to get vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause of med­ical rea­sons, they can ap­ply for a med­ical ex­emp­tion. Both these cat­e­gories of em­ploy­ees will have to pro­vide a neg­a­tive PCR test every two weeks and keep the cer­tifi­cate on them while at work. 

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the forms will be avail­able from Fri­day (Oc­to­ber 8). 

“From Fri­day morn­ing, these ex­emp­tion or de­fer­ral cer­tifi­cates will be avail­able at any of your lo­cal health cen­tres or any of the out­pa­tient spe­cial­ist clin­ics at the pub­lic sec­tor in­sti­tu­tions,” he said. 

Doc­tors who al­so prac­tice pri­vate­ly won’t be able to is­sue these cer­tifi­cates. It must come from a pub­lic in­sti­tu­tion. 

With a sig­nif­i­cant part of the Safe Zone pro­gramme re­ly­ing on im­mu­ni­sa­tion cards to de­ter­mine el­i­gi­bil­i­ty, Paras­ram said he will be meet­ing with en­force­ment agen­cies to train them on how to spot fakes.