By the mid­dle of Ju­ly, this coun­try’s mask man­date is ex­pect­ed to be lift­ed.

This an­nounce­ment was made on Sat­ur­day by Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, while he was speak­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port be­fore leav­ing on a flight to Suri­name.

The Prime Min­is­ter said in the re­cent past, the COVID-19 Omi­cron vari­ant has not been re­placed by any oth­er more dead­ly vari­ant.

“There were one or two vari­ants that have ap­peared, but they have not been of great con­cern be­cause they have not shown to be more dan­ger­ous than Omi­cron,” Row­ley said.

He said by now, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of the pop­u­la­tion would have been ex­posed to the COVID-19 virus, cre­at­ing nat­ur­al im­mu­ni­ty.

“We now can be­gin to re­move one of the last ves­tiges of the pan­dem­ic, which is the mask we are wear­ing and the Min­is­ter of Health it is our in­ten­tion to re­move the re­quire­ment for wear­ing of masks by the mid­dle of this month,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said at that time the pop­u­la­tion would be al­lowed to choose whether they want to wear masks. How­ev­er, he said there would be some ar­eas the Gov­ern­ment would make “strong sug­ges­tions” that, based on the na­ture of the op­er­a­tions, masks are worn.

He said the re­moval of the mask man­date would be a strong sig­nal that T&T has sur­vived and come through a very fright­en­ing pe­ri­od.