Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s quar­an­tine pe­ri­od end­ed yes­ter­day - and he’s among guests who have been in­vit­ed to to­day’s swear­ing-in func­tion of new For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne.

Row­ley has been work­ing from home fol­low­ing his an­nounce­ment last Fri­day that it had come to his at­ten­tion that on Au­gust 10th, he’d been ex­posed to some­one who lat­er test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

The Prime Min­is­ter said he had been test­ed and the re­sults were neg­a­tive. Out of cau­tion, he added he’d been ad­vised to re­main in self-quar­an­tine at home un­til yes­ter­day (Mon­day) when the full 14-day pe­ri­od would have ex­pired.

Row­ley con­firmed he will be back out to work in a post on the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter's Face­book page last night. How­ev­er, it was a post to rub­bish an ear­li­er post mak­ing the rounds yes­ter­day which claimed Row­ley had left T&T for the US.

“This piece of pub­lic mis­chief orig­i­nat­ed from the same source of po­lit­i­cal mis­con­duct which dogged the coun­try for the last five years. It is to be dis­re­gard­ed and dis­missed for what it is, mis­in­for­ma­tion aimed at dis­rupt­ing the peace, qui­et and good or­der in our coun­try,” Row­ley wrote.

“It is clear that some peo­ple just will not give up in their at­tempt to cre­ate stress­es for the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. The fact is that the Prime Min­is­ter, hav­ing test­ed neg­a­tive last Fri­day, re­mained in home iso­la­tion un­til to­day and ex­pects to be out ear­ly to­mor­row morn­ing (to­day).

“Dur­ing this pe­ri­od the Prime Min­is­ter re­mained en­gaged night and day as he worked from his home of­fice.

All mem­bers of the Prime Min­is­ter’s house­hold are safe and well and none have trav­elled out of Trinidad re­cent­ly.”

He al­so thanked the many well-wish­ers and cit­i­zens who sent kind words and prayers for the safe­ty and well-be­ing of the Row­ley fam­i­ly.

Mean­while, it was con­firmed that as per pro­to­col, Row­ley, as Prime Min­is­ter, has been in­vit­ed to Browne’s swear­ing-in this af­ter­noon at Pres­i­dent’s House. But there was no of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion from Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day that he would at­tend the 1.30 pm func­tion.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

Apart from the Prime Min­is­ter, guests in­vit­ed to the func­tion in­clude the Chief Jus­tice and his wife, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, head of the diplo­mat­ic corps and oth­er min­is­ters.

Browne, 47, who was T&T’s am­bas­sador to Brazil, re­turned with his fam­i­ly re­cent­ly and had been in quar­an­tine. That end­ed last Sun­day.

Browne, a med­ical doc­tor, was Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP un­der the Patrick Man­ning Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, where he was So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter. He al­so served as MP from May 2010 on­wards. He was ap­point­ed T&T’s am­bas­sador to Brazil un­der the first Row­ley PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Browne’s ap­point­ment is the last to com­plete the 22-mem­ber Cab­i­net. In ad­di­tion to the min­is­ters who hold full cab­i­net rank, there are al­so eight oth­er sup­port­ing min­is­ters of state in dif­fer­ent min­istries.

The swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for Browne will be fol­lowed at 4 pm by the ap­point­ment of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as Op­po­si­tion Leader.

As was done for last week’s swear­ing-in of Cab­i­net min­is­ters, strict COVID-19 pro­to­cols - sani­tis­ing, so­cial dis­tanc­ing et cetera - will be in place at Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s, for to­day’s func­tions.

No word from Jack on his COVID test

Mean­while, there’s been no word from In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty leader Jack Warn­er, who’d said last Fri­day that he was go­ing to take a COVID test yes­ter­day morn­ing at the St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal.

He con­firmed then that two of his of­fice em­ploy­ees had test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

There was no re­ply from Warn­er yes­ter­day to calls and text mes­sages to his phone. But a rel­a­tive at his home briefly con­firmed he did do the test and was await­ing the re­sults. They gave no oth­er in­for­ma­tion in re­ply to ques­tions.