• From midnight on Sunday March 29th 2020 Trinidad and Tobago will deepen separation by having all non-essential activities forbidden.
• The National Security Minister and the Health Minister will advise the country on a list of non-essential activities that will be forbidden from
midnight on Sunday.
• Health, Public Utilities, Social Development, National Security, Air and Sea ports will remain open and will allowed to function. This is not a lockdown, "Lockdown the country" is a fashion statement but Govt cannot lockdown the entire country. It's an SIQ- Separate, Isolate , Quarantine.
• PM warned- “You see the liming and the congregating...the police will enforce the law.”
• Appeals to every citizen to be a responsible and sensible citizen and contribute toward saving lives in TT.
* OJTs will be moved into the Social Development Ministry to help organize response and reaction to the most vulnerable.
• The Finance Minister has made $157m available to the Ministry of Health to help build more capacity to deal with COVID-19 crisis, especially among several Regional Health Authorities.
* The closing of the borders is the last means to close TT from the rest of an infected world. Nationals trapped overseas and the nation must understand the closing of the border is to protect the entire country from this virus.
• There are 330,000 nationals outside of the country - a quarter of the population.
• $157m allocated to RHAs will be for Consumables (gloves, caps, syringes etc); Human Resource Capacity (house doctors); Infrastructure (isolation rooms, self-quarantine areas); Equipment (cardiac monitors, ventilators.
• The ERHA to get $6.2m to ramp up capacity at the Balandra Facility where the cruise ship passengers are being quarantined. ; NWRHA allocated $16.6m; SWRHA gets $4.5m. NCRHA which is the focal point of COVID-19 response to get 129.9m to ramp up. Disbursement of these monies will be spread out over the next three to six months.
• China on Wednesday donated items to the Ministry. China donated to TT 15 thermal scanners, 4,000 test kits to be handed over to CARPHA. Deyalsingh has written to China Ambassador Song Yumin to purchase 15,000 test kits.