Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Par­lia­ment will con­vene on Wednes­day to end the state of emer­gency (SoE) al­though COVID-19 cas­es and deaths have been in­creas­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced yes­ter­day.

The SoE has been in place since May 15 when a 9 pm to 5 am cur­few was im­posed in re­sponse to the ris­ing num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es and lim­it­ed bed spaces in the par­al­lel health sys­tem

Dr Row­ley, who spoke at a me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Anns, said the SoE was “a hold­ing arrange­ment to re­duce the pe­ri­od of ex­po­sure and mix­ing un­til such time we could have had a roll­out of the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.” He said ac­cord­ing to the ex­ist­ing laws, the SoE could not be ex­tend­ed be­yond No­vem­ber 30.

“I want to ad­vise the pop­u­la­tion that while we can’t do oth­er things, what we can do now is to re­move that re­stric­tion and al­low more of the pop­u­la­tion to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for them­selves. The state of emer­gency gave us breath­ing room to start the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme but we can do with­out it now,” he said.

He added that the pub­lic health or­di­nance still stands and peo­ple will still be re­quired to be masked, pub­lic gath­er­ings will re­main at ten, and fetes and par­ties will re­main pro­hib­it­ed. Pub­lic trans­port will re­main at 75 per cent ca­pac­i­ty and bor­der arrange­ments will re­main the same. How­ev­er, there will be a slight eas­ing of some oth­er re­stric­tions

Dr Row­ley said: “Re­li­gious ser­vices will re­main the way they are ex­cept that we will per­mit the oc­cu­pan­cy of in­ter­nal gath­er­ings to 50 per cent for re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties which will re­main for no more than 90 min­utes, so you will get a bit more space us­age but the time you will be ex­posed to in there will be 90 min­utes or less. In­ter­nal use to be 50 per cent for chris­ten­ings, wed­dings, non-re­li­gious events at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

“As for grave­sides, we will al­low 25 per­sons there. It was ten and now we think 25 will al­low more per­sons to co-op­er­ate with the law.”

Ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons will be able to use pub­lic pools as they will now fall un­der the safe zones ini­tia­tive but beach­es will re­main closed.

“The fear is that once we open the beach­es . . . open beach­es at­tract a cer­tain type of ac­tiv­i­ty and that is com­ing to­geth­er, crowd­ing and par­ty­ing. I am hop­ing that be­fore Christ­mas we should be able to go back in­to the brach en­vi­ron­ment with some kind of re­stric­tions. Maybe we can start with morn­ing open­ing ups,” the prime min­is­ter said.

He warned that peo­ple who breach the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions will face con­se­quences for their ac­tions.

“We are in a des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion. Don’t let it be­come more des­per­ate and them look for some­body to blame,” he said

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Row­ley, ris­ing COVID-19 deaths and cas­es have put T&T in a “dan­ger­ous place.”

He agreed with the an­ti-vaxxers that it is their body and their choice but re­mind­ed them that there are con­se­quences for their ac­tions.

“There are peo­ple in the hos­pi­tals who have been work­ing for a year and a half, some of them sev­en days a week and some of them 18 to 20 hours a day to try to keep the un­for­tu­nate alive. There are tired doc­tors and nurs­es and they have said to me that they are think­ing of get­ting out of the arrange­ment be­cause they can’t take it any­more. The peo­ple they are car­ing for don’t want to seem to care for them­selves,” he said

He said out of a pop­u­la­tion of 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple there are 600,000 peo­ple who refuse to be vac­ci­nat­ed. How­ev­er, de­spite the grim sit­u­a­tion the coun­try faces, Dr Row­ley ruled out an­oth­er lock­down.

“We have to live, we have to work, we need an econ­o­my,” he said.

“If a wave like our third wave is to come the au­to­mat­ic re­sponse is not to shut the coun­try down again.”