Gov­ern­ment must move swift­ly to ramp up COVID-19 test­ing in this coun­try, as well as make ef­forts to strength­en and tight­en na­tion­al bor­ders, to stem the spread of the coro­n­avirus.

That’s the call from Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC MP, who al­so is rec­om­mend­ing that teams of Health Of­fi­cers be de­ployed, to en­sure Covid-19 reg­u­la­tions’ com­pli­ance by busi­ness­es and the gen­er­al pub­lic.

In ad­di­tion to more coro­n­avirus test­ing, the Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so wants more PPE for front­line health work­ers, as well as an in­crease in beds and med­ical equip­ment, to deal with the surge in COVID-19 cas­es, once test­ing is in­creased.

The full text of the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s state­ment, fol­lows…

OP­PO­SI­TION LEADER CALLS FOR SIG­NIF­I­CANT IN­CREASE IN COVID-19 TEST­ING; PROP­ER BOR­DER CON­TROL MEA­SURES TO STEM SPREAD AND MORE

The Op­po­si­tion is very con­cerned that the Gov­ern­ment has not yet em­barked on a long over­due, ag­gres­sive na­tion-wide Covid-19 test­ing pol­i­cy, in the wake of the lat­est state­ments on the is­sue by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley.

At a news con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day, Au­gust 29th 2020, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley prof­fered no new mea­sures to com­bat this dead­ly cri­sis, de­spite the alarm­ing in­crease in Covid-19 pos­i­tive cas­es among cit­i­zens across the length and breadth of T&T. 

Apart from legal­ly man­dat­ing the wear­ing of masks in pub­lic, the Gov­ern­ment is wor­ry­ing­ly con­tin­u­ing its dan­ger­ous trend of fail­ing to ad­e­quate­ly re­spond to this dead­ly pan­dem­ic in an ef­fec­tive, time­ly man­ner. This trend can re­sult in even more med­ical, so­cial and eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty in our bat­tered na­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion has sup­port­ed the leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tive for manda­to­ry wear­ing of masks in pub­lic, and we are now call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to en­gage in sim­i­lar ag­gres­sive and prac­ti­cal ini­tia­tives to com­bat the Covid-19 spread.

We, there­fore, re­peat our long­stand­ing mantra for Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly pro­cure rapid test­ing kits so that we can gen­uine­ly get a re­al idea of the lev­els of com­mu­ni­ty spread.

We call on Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly em­bark on re­newed, ur­gent, na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tions with the Op­po­si­tion and oth­er crit­i­cal busi­ness, labour and so­cial sec­tor stake­hold­ers.

Such talks would as­sist in en­sur­ing that there is a prop­er and work­able NA­TION­AL plan in place to deal with the harm­ful med­ical, eco­nom­ic and so­cial fall­out from the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

A work­able na­tion­al plan is es­pe­cial­ly nec­es­sary since Gov­ern­ment has aban­doned their promis­es of pan­dem­ic leave for em­ploy­ees as there was no men­tion of its sta­tus by the Prime Min­is­ter.

Al­so, peo­ple who ap­plied for the salary grant are re­port­ed­ly still wait­ing for re­lief months lat­er.

As more and more busi­ness­es close their doors, the Gov­ern­ment has yet not put for­ward any plan to cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so no­tably made no men­tion what­so­ev­er of what his Gov­ern­ment is do­ing to pro­tect our bor­ders from the in­flux of il­le­gal vis­i­tors, who are be­ing linked to the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty spread of Covid-19 in re­cent months.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry must im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress this is­sue, and du­ly and ur­gent­ly in­form the pub­lic of same.

The Op­po­si­tion al­so pro­pos­es the fol­low­ing im­me­di­ate steps to help stem the spread of the virus:

1.         Es­tab­lish a COVID-19 In­tel­li­gence where all na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies will com­mu­ni­cate and ex­e­cute strate­gic plans and op­er­a­tions in uni­son;

2.         De­ploy teams of Health Of­fi­cers to en­sure Covid-19 reg­u­la­tions’ com­pli­ance by busi­ness­es and the gen­er­al pub­lic;

3.         Ur­gent­ly se­cure 100,000 rapid tests (enough to test about 10% of our pop­u­la­tion) and which will give re­sults with­in 30 min­utes;

4.         Stock up suit­able amounts of PPE for our front­line work­ers as well as more beds, ven­ti­la­tors, and oth­er med­ical equip­ment must be made avail­able for ex­pect­ed in­creas­es that will come with the ramped-up test­ing.

The Op­po­si­tion urges all to con­tin­ue to fol­low all health guide­lines set out by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, obey the laws re­gard­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing and wear­ing of masks, and com­mit to bat­tling this pan­dem­ic to­geth­er, as a unit­ed peo­ple and na­tion.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, SC, MP
Leader of the Op­po­si­tion
Au­gust 30th, 2020