To­day, Sun­day, for the first time in al­most two years, mem­bers of the pub­lic can do away with masks while in pub­lic spaces. How­ev­er, the man­date still ap­plies to vis­its to health clin­ics, den­tal clin­ics and hos­pi­tals.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh made the an­nounce­ment on Ju­ly 6.

Deyals­ingh said, "So all things be­ing equal and bar­ring any un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, from Sun­day, Ju­ly 17, the mask­ing man­date will be lift­ed. How­ev­er, we are go­ing to be do­ing a risk-based rec­om­men­da­tion for var­i­ous vul­ner­a­ble groups and spe­cial pop­u­la­tions where we rec­om­mend that you still be masked.”

The man­date to wear masks in pub­lic was one of the ca­su­al­ties of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Fol­low­ing what was hap­pen­ing in oth­er parts of the world, on Au­gust 31, 2020, the Gov­ern­ment man­dat­ed the wear­ing of masks. The con­se­quences for not do­ing so re­sult­ed in a $1,000 fine for the first of­fence and $2,000 for the sec­ond of­fence and $3,000 for the third of­fence.

Speak­ing at a Min­istry of Health me­dia con­fer­ence last week, Deyals­ingh said in­di­vid­ual busi­ness­es still have the fi­nal say on mask-wear­ing rules in their es­tab­lish­ments.

Deyals­ingh fur­ther en­cour­aged the use of masks while in set­tings where the risk of COVID-19 spread is high, say­ing it is a “com­mon sense ap­proach”.

Last week, at the Min­istry of Health’s me­dia con­fer­ence, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram stressed that wear­ing a mask would be based on an in­di­vid­ual’s lev­el of risk in a par­tic­u­lar set­ting.

Ide­al­ly, im­muno­com­pro­mised peo­ple, who have un­der­ly­ing med­ical con­di­tions or are obese, should con­tin­ue to wear their masks.

The Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T in a state­ment on Sat­ur­day said it will be up to each bank to de­cide if they will al­low cus­tomers in­to banks with or with­out masks.

Sit­u­a­tions that re­quire masks to be worn by these in­clude:

1. Re­tail set­tings like su­per­mar­kets, gro­ceries and malls

2. Pub­lic trans­porta­tion and trans­porta­tion hubs

3. Ports of en­try

4. Mass gath­er­ings

5. Phar­ma­cies

6. Schools and ed­u­ca­tion­al es­tab­lish­ments

7. Work­places

8. Places of wor­ship

9. Beau­ty sa­lon/bar­ber­shop

10. Spa (when pos­si­ble)

11. Cin­e­mas and the­atres

No one spared

Like all the oth­er con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sions made dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the wear­ing of masks al­so had its mo­ments.

Whether they were rich or poor, pri­vate cit­i­zens or pub­lic per­son­al­i­ties, no one es­caped the penal­ties for not wear­ing masks.

In March 2021, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi apol­o­gised af­ter there was a video cir­cu­lat­ing of him not wear­ing a mask at a char­i­ty event af­ter which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment in Al-Rawi

In 2020, then po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith or­dered that a po­lice of­fi­cer be tick­et­ed for breach­ing the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Reg­u­la­tions by not wear­ing a mask in pub­lic. The of­fi­cer, who works at the Port-of-Spain CID, was on du­ty in down­town Port-of-Spain and was pho­tographed not wear­ing a mask.

Or­di­nary cit­i­zens al­so had to pay their fair share for break­ing this law.

Ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Me­dia re­port two weeks ago, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice (TTPS) in­di­cat­ed that 27,664 tick­ets were is­sued for fail­ing to wear face masks, gen­er­at­ing over $28 mil­lion in rev­enue.

While manda­to­ry face masks will no longer be in ef­fect in some spaces from Ju­ly 17, TTPS’ Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer Ag ASP Sheri­don Hill warned cit­i­zens they could still be fined $1,000 for breach­ing the law in cer­tain places.

Fi­nal­ly, in its last up­date yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health da­ta showed that there were 109 cas­es and two re­port­ed COVID-re­lat­ed deaths in the pre­vi­ous 24 hours.

Based on this da­ta and af­ter two years of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, it seems that the mask-wear­ing is­sue is far from over.