SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is ad­vis­ing cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue to prac­tice per­son­al hy­giene and wear face masks as he says the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) be­lieves the world is still in the first wave of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing,  Deyals­ingh said while T&T has no new pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es, the glob­al num­bers have risen to 5.7 mil­lion cas­es.

He said while the Gov­ern­ment can­not leg­is­late the wear­ing of masks and prac­tis­ing of per­son­al hy­giene, it con­tin­ues to use strong moral sua­sion to urge the pub­lic to com­ply.

Deyals­ingh said there are cur­rent­ly 85 na­tion­als in quar­an­tine, five at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, 21 at the Tacarigua Rack­et Cen­tre and 59 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Debe cam­pus.

That num­ber is ex­pect­ed to go up over the next few weeks as the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty grants ex­emp­tions to na­tion­als to re­turn home.

Al­so speak­ing the brief­ing, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young gave an as­sur­ance to the thou­sands of na­tion­als who re­main stuck around the world that they will be al­lowed to re­turn home.

“All na­tion­als who are not in T&T and want to re­turn, you will be per­mit­ted to re­turn, as we’ve said and as I will re­peat here this morn­ing, what we are do­ing is very care­ful­ly man­ag­ing the process and be­lieve you me, we do un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties that each and every one of you na­tion­als face who are out­side of T&T want­i­ng to re­turn as well as your fam­i­lies and what it is you are go­ing through,” Young said.

He said while the min­istry is grant­i­ng ex­emp­tions, it can­not al­low those na­tion­als who have the means to char­ter their own flights to take prece­dence over less for­tu­nate cit­i­zens.

“From a fair­ness point of view, that can’t be the test at this stage be­cause some­one says they can char­ter a plane to fly in will get prece­dence over some­one who is a more needy case.”

He said the ex­emp­tions are be­ing man­aged in a way that does cause the health care sys­tem to be over­whelmed.