Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health has de­fend­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s di­rec­tive for restau­rants to ab­stain from serv­ing al­co­holic bev­er­ages al­though they have been al­lowed to re­sume in-house ser­vice. Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards said the de­ci­sion was based on sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence.

“The de­ci­sion for re­strict­ing al­co­hol at restau­rants...this is a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion that was tak­en by a group of per­sons based on the sci­ence and ev­i­dence on the im­pact of al­co­hol,” she said.
“We be­lieve that al­co­hol from a be­hav­iour­al pat­tern caus­es a dis-in­hi­bi­tion (sic) of be­hav­iour and thus re­sults in per­sons re­duc­ing...their an­ti-COVID mea­sures in terms of face mask-wear­ing and prox­im­i­ty, thus in­creas­ing their risk of COVID-19 trans­mis­sion.”

On Sat­ur­day, Row­ley an­nounced that restau­rants would be al­lowed to re­sume in-house ser­vice at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty but were de­barred from serv­ing al­co­hol and must obey­ing the rel­e­vant safe­ty pro­to­cols. This has been met with mixed re­ac­tions from restau­ran­teers. Bars, how­ev­er, are still not be­ing al­lowed to re­sume in-house ser­vice.

Mean­while, it was al­so an­nounced that two more fa­cil­i­ties will be added to the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem by Fri­day.
The new fa­cil­i­ties will in­crease the sys­tem’s in­ter­op­er­a­ble bed ca­pac­i­ty from 1,551 across 21 fa­cil­i­ties to 1,651 across 23.

One fa­cil­i­ty will be at the Kapok ho­tel for repa­tri­at­ed na­tion­als and has a bed ca­pac­i­ty of 90 while the oth­er will be a cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty in To­ba­go with a bed ca­pac­i­ty of 10. 
“As you would imag­ine, pris­on­ers can­not re­al­ly be kept in self-iso­la­tion at the cur­rent max­i­mum-se­cu­ri­ty pris­ons such as the Re­mand Yard,” Ab­dool-Richards said. 

“Such a case could re­sult in a very rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus with­in the pris­ons which is a risk to the pris­on­ers them­selves as well as the staff at­tached to the max­i­mum-se­cu­ri­ty pris­ons.”

There are cur­rent­ly 19 pris­on­ers at the Clax­ton Bay Cor­rec­tion Fa­cil­i­ty af­ter 18 pris­on­ers of the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 last week. The Clax­ton Bay fa­cil­i­ty can hold 26 pa­tients.  

The de­ci­sion to in­crease the num­ber of fa­cil­i­ties, Ab­dool-Richards said, was part­ly due to the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to in­crease the num­ber of repa­tri­a­tions with­in the near fu­ture. She said two flights will be bring­ing na­tion­als home from Mi­a­mi on Thurs­day and from Bar­ba­dos on Fri­day. 

The es­tab­lish­ment of the new fa­cil­i­ties comes one month af­ter two of the ear­li­er fa­cil­i­ties—the Camp Ba­lan­dra and Brook­lyn, San­gre Grande step-down fa­cil­i­ties—were de­com­mis­sioned.