Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will re­main in Cal­i­for­nia af­ter lead­ing a del­e­ga­tion to the IX Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in Los An­ge­les, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter said yes­ter­day.

Dr Row­ley is sched­uled to un­der­go rou­tine med­ical test­ing in the com­ing weeks which in­cludes car­diac and prostate analy­sis.

The prime min­is­ter trav­elled to Los An­ge­les to at­tend the Ninth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as which ran from Wednes­day to Fri­day last week.

Hav­ing re­turned from a Cari­com gath­er­ing on agri­cul­ture in Guyana last month, Dr Row­ley had hint­ed that be­ing in Los An­ge­les would have al­lowed for his med­ical check, which he has done there on oth­er oc­ca­sions.

His trip to the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, he had not­ed, was part of a busy month of June that will al­so see him at­tend­ing a world sum­mit called by the Eu­ro­pean Union on June 21 and 22 to dis­cuss mat­ters of de­vel­op­ment that he said T&T and the re­gion are in­ter­est­ed in.

He will rep­re­sent Cari­com to­geth­er with Cari­com’s chair­man, Prime Min­is­ter of Be­lize John Briceno, and Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness at that meet­ing.

Three Latin Amer­i­can lead­ers will al­so at­tend, to­geth­er with the lead­ers of EU coun­tries, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and lead­ers of Asian coun­tries.

As a re­sult, Dr Row­ley will not be at­tend­ing the up­com­ing Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in Ki­gali, Rwan­da which be­gins on June 21.

A T&T con­tin­gent led by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne will in­stead be at­tend­ing, dur­ing which T&T will vote for Ja­maican For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kam­i­na John­son Smith as the new Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Com­mon­wealth.

The prime min­is­ter had al­so un­der­gone a se­ries of med­ical tests in Cal­i­for­nia in March 2019, his sec­ond set of tests by doc­tors there.

Back then he had said that the tests had be­come nec­es­sary due to a coro­nary is­sue which was first dis­cov­ered in 2016.

Dr Row­ley had made it clear that he suf­fered no symp­toms which ham­pered his abil­i­ty to per­form his du­ties but that his doc­tors, who had at­tend­ed to him for the last 25 years in Cal­i­for­nia, had asked him to pri­ori­tise his an­nu­al med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion.

A 2016 coro­nary scan had re­vealed Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had small soft plaque in one of his ar­ter­ies and doc­tors in­di­cat­ed that it should be mon­i­tored.

In 2017, doc­tors said it ap­peared as though the plaque was grow­ing.

The ad­vice from his doc­tors then was that it should be mon­i­tored to de­ter­mine whether fur­ther in­ter­ven­tion might be re­quired.

He re­ceived a clean bill of health in his last test but was ad­vised to con­tin­ue hav­ing tests done.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, the Colm Im­bert will con­tin­ue to act as Prime Min­is­ter un­til Dr Row­ley’s re­turn.

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