For the first time in close to two years, peo­ple were able to walk around in pub­lic spaces in Trinidad and To­ba­go with­out a mask and with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­ceiv­ing a tick­et.

There was al­so good news for pas­sen­gers of Caribbean Air­lines.

In the streets of Port-of-Spain and around the food court at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, some peo­ple made the most of the change to the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

How­ev­er, not every­one de­cid­ed to ditch their masks, with a few peo­ple still opt­ing to play it safe or con­tin­ue with the habit.

As of mid­night yes­ter­day the mask man­date end­ed, al­low­ing cit­i­zens to move about with­out the face cov­er­ing.

The mask man­date, which came in­to ef­fect on Au­gust 31, 2020 in an at­tempt to lim­it the spread of COVID-19, of­fi­cial­ly end­ed on Sun­day.

But while the man­date end­ed, mem­bers of the pub­lic are still legal­ly re­quired to wear a mask in pri­vate and pub­lic hos­pi­tals, as well as pri­vate or pub­lic med­ical clin­ics.

Fail­ure to do so, ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Health 2019 Nov­el Coro­n­avirus Reg­u­la­tions 2022, will re­sult in a pos­si­ble $2,000 fine for adults, as well as a $1,000 fine for the guardians re­spon­si­ble for a child who fails to wear a mask.

Busi­ness­es, how­ev­er, are al­lowed to make their own de­ci­sion on whether to make mask-wear­ing manda­to­ry in their es­tab­lish­ment.

The Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion on Sat­ur­day said each in­di­vid­ual bank will be re­spon­si­ble for its mask-wear­ing guide­lines, while the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion ad­vised that mask-wear­ing is op­tion­al for cus­tomers.

The Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh last week al­so in­di­cat­ed that while the man­date is over, busi­ness­es can in­sist that cus­tomers wear a mask to en­ter their premis­es.

But for those with a flight com­ing up in the near fu­ture, Caribbean Air­lines an­nounced that, in keep­ing with the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tion change, the wear­ing of masks at check-in, while board­ing and dur­ing flights is no longer manda­to­ry un­til Sep­tem­ber 17.

“How­ev­er, as fur­ther out­lined by the Pub­lic Health Au­thor­i­ties, wear­ing a mask on board is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed as an ad­di­tion­al lay­er of pro­tec­tion against COVID-19 and oth­er in­fec­tious dis­eases,” a CAL state­ment read.

Mean­while, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 up­date on Sun­day evening, there were 43 new cas­es of the virus, with no deaths.

There are 102 COVID pa­tients in hos­pi­tal care.

It said, 4,038 peo­ple have lost their lives in T&T to COVID-19, while 51.1 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is vac­ci­nat­ed.