The Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BOATT) is re­fut­ing analy­sis that seems to sug­gest the re­cent spike in COVID-19 cas­es in this coun­try, came as a re­sult of the re­port­ed “last lap” event.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued to­day by the As­so­ci­a­tion, a prop­er read­ing of the da­ta would show that the in­crease in cas­es came af­ter Nom­i­na­tion Day in Ju­ly.  

BOATT is sug­gest­ing in­stead that the ac­tiv­i­ties sur­round­ing the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, rather than the “last lap” event, may have been re­spon­si­ble for the surge in COVID-19 cas­es.

The full text of the BOATT state­ment, fol­lows…

BOATT STATE­MENT ON COVID-19 DA­TA

The Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go will like to ad­dress the pre­sen­ta­tion giv­en at the COVID 19 press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day 1th Sep­tem­ber 2020.

Our med­ical ex­perts out­lined cer­tain events on the graph which shows the dai­ly COVID pos­i­tive cas­es by date col­lect­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go, one of which is a so called "last lap" event. They went on to out­line 2 weeks af­ter the event and sub­se­quent­ly sug­gest­ed that the "last lap" event was re­spon­si­ble for a peak in COVID 19 pos­i­tive cas­es.

This da­ta was com­piled by our med­ical pro­fes­sion­als of the pub­lic ser­vice whom re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to pro­vide the pub­lic with true and ac­cu­rate da­ta and not to on­ly out­line cer­tain events. The pub­lic can then, un­der­stand, an­a­lyze and come to a well in­formed de­ci­sion and po­si­tion on the cur­rent COVID 19 sit­u­a­tion.

Due to the lack of out­lined events, this as­so­ci­a­tion chose to as­sist in out­lin­ing all events which took place be­fore the 18th of Sep­tem­ber 2020 us­ing the very same da­ta that was pro­vid­ed to the pub­lic on the 19th of Sep­tem­ber 2020.

The Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion will like to point out that af­ter be­ing al­lowed to re­open on the 22nd of June 2020, Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mained free of lo­cal COVID 19 pos­i­tive cas­es for 27 days.

The BOATT would al­so like to point out that the start of the steady in­cline of lo­cal COVID pos­i­tive cas­es came ex­act­ly 14 days af­ter Nom­i­na­tion Day which was held on the 17th of Ju­ly 2020. This in­cline in cas­es be­gan as clus­ter spread and then sub­se­quent­ly es­ca­lat­ed to com­mu­ni­ty spread.