An­na Lisa-Paul

Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to reg­is­ter record-break­ing num­bers of new COVID-19 in­fec­tions—with 531 news cas­es reg­is­tered Thurs­day, bring­ing the to­tal ac­tive pos­i­tive cas­es to 7,950.

Sim­i­lar­ly, 17 ad­di­tion­al deaths were record­ed dur­ing the 24-hour re­port­ing pe­ri­od, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of deaths to 1,908.

The de­ceased in­clud­ed sev­en el­der­ly males; five el­der­ly fe­males; four mid­dle-aged males and one young adult male.

In its in­for­ma­tion up­date, the Min­istry of Health said that out of those who had died, eight had mul­ti­ple co­mor­bidi­ties, in­clud­ing di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, asth­ma, heart dis­ease, kid­ney dis­ease, lung dis­ease and Parkin­son’s dis­ease. Four pa­tients were said to have one co­mor­bid­i­ty (di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion or cere­bral pal­sy) while the oth­er five had no known co­mor­bidi­ties.

Of the 480 peo­ple who re­main hos­pi­talised for COVID-19, the min­istry said some 91.7 per cent of those pa­tients are not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

With the lift­ing of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) at mid­night Wednes­day (No­vem­ber 18), changes have been made to the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance.

The new reg­u­la­tions, which went in­to ef­fect on Wednes­day, will re­main in ef­fect un­til Jan­u­ary 15, 2022.

The new reg­u­la­tions in­clude:

• Ten per­sons al­lowed in a pub­lic gath­er­ing.

• An in­crease in the at­ten­dance of per­sons at re­li­gious gath­er­ings, wed­dings, fu­ner­als, and chris­ten­ings at the fa­cil­i­ty to 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

• Re­li­gious meet­ings or ser­vices must not ex­ceed 90 min­utes.

• On­ly 25 per­sons are al­lowed at the ac­tu­al bur­ial site, cre­ma­tion site or ceme­tery.

• Pub­lic swim­ming pools can op­er­ate as Safe Zones.

• Con­sump­tion of al­co­hol is not al­lowed in a pub­lic place un­less it is on the premis­es of a Safe Zone or there is per­mis­sion from the min­is­ter.

• Con­sump­tion of al­co­hol is not per­mit­ted with­in the precincts of a Safe Zone un­less ap­proved by the min­is­ter.

The reg­u­la­tions that re­main un­changed in­clude:

• The re­quire­ment for mask-wear­ing in a ve­hi­cle or ves­sel.

• Re­quire­ment for mask-wear­ing in pub­lic places

• Med­ical de­fer­ral cer­tifi­cates.

• Pub­lic trans­port re­mains at 75 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

• Air­ports and sea­ports will con­tin­ue to be reg­u­lat­ed by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

• Test­ing, quar­an­tine and self-quar­an­tine reg­u­la­tions re­main the same; and the Min­istry of Health can is­sue guide­lines.