An­na-Lisa Paul

Even as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day an­nounced there will be no state-spon­sored Christ­mas par­ties through­out the pub­lic sec­tor this year as they do not want peo­ple to con­gre­gate and in­crease COVID-19 fig­ures, the coun­try record­ed two ad­di­tion­al deaths.

Whilst the week­end brief­ing was tak­ing place with Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram re­port­ing the death toll had re­mained at 113, the Min­istry of Health up­dat­ed their sta­tis­tics which re­vealed that COVID-19 deaths had risen to 115 as at 4 pm yes­ter­day.

Ad­dress­ing the na­tion from the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary Fa­cil­i­ty, Row­ley said the be­hav­iours of cit­i­zens with­in the next month would de­ter­mine if schools would re­open in Jan­u­ary 2021.

He said, “The Min­istry of Health has asked the pri­vate sec­tor not to have Christ­mas par­ties. It is not that we don’t want to cel­e­brate Christ­mas. It is not that we are Ebenez­er Scrooge and cousins of Scrooge. It is that the is­sue we are fac­ing and fight­ing is the is­sue of con­tact…is­sue of in­fec­tion cross­ing from per­son to per­son through con­tact where there is con­gre­ga­tion.”

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh al­so ap­pealed to fam­i­lies to re­duce gath­er­ings and lim­it their num­bers dur­ing events planned for the hol­i­day sea­son. He al­so called on busi­ness­es to re­frain from hold­ing Christ­mas par­ties.

Deyals­ingh said, "I want to reach out to all Cham­bers of Com­merce to ask their mem­ber­ship not to have Christ­mas par­ties. I have spo­ken to my own Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Health and we will be hav­ing no Christ­mas func­tions.

"I want to reach out to all re­li­gious lead­ers…tell your flocks, your devo­tees, your ja­maats to avoid fam­i­ly gath­er­ings this Christ­mas sea­son. Every leader of a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, every Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, any­one who has in­flu­ence over peo­ple, to urge those who look up to you for lead­er­ship…that this Christ­mas ought to be a holy Christ­mas but a qui­et Christ­mas. Keep your bub­bles with­in your­self. Cel­e­brate with­in your fam­i­ly units."

He al­so ad­vised peo­ple to avoid wed­dings.