Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed he’s been test­ed for COVID-19 and the test re­sult was neg­a­tive. He gave the con­fir­ma­tion at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing up­dat­ing the coun­try on the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion.

“Yes, I’ve had my test done at the ap­pro­pri­ate time and not been deemed to be pos­i­tive. (The test) was said to be neg­a­tive. I’ve al­so kept a very low con­tact lev­el for 14 to 28 days ... as I want to be here to serve you and I’m not tak­ing any chances,” Row­ley said.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter said to­day he has to be in To­ba­go for his el­dest broth­er’s fu­ner­al and may stay a few days. His broth­er Math­ias Joseph, 81, died last Fri­day at Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Row­ley said, “I’m mov­ing from here (Trinidad) to there (To­ba­go) very quick­ly. I’ll be in a fu­ner­al that al­lows on­ly five peo­ple.”

The lat­ter ref­er­ence was to the fact that Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est COVID-19 con­tin­gency this week was to re­duce the num­ber of peo­ple al­lowed to gath­er from 10 to five.

Row­ley mused, “How does one con­duct a part­ing with five peo­ple from a very large fam­i­ly? It’s not nice.”

He said he was aware of is­sues like virus out­breaks since he was 12 years and his grand­fa­ther had told him about the ef­fect of a flu out­break of 1918 on To­ba­go. He said thank­ful­ly, T&T’s not at that stage where a huge num­ber of coffins are need­ed.

The PM said he felt a chill look­ing at world me­dia re­ports of an army con­voy go­ing to an Ital­ian town to re­move the dead and of re­ports of 24 dead in a New York hos­pi­tal.

Row­ley al­so said his younger daugh­ter Sonel, who’s on staff at Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, New York, is work­ing from home and fol­low­ing au­thor­i­ties’ in­struc­tions.

“I must ad­mit, while I man­age T&T’s af­fairs, every hour I think of my daugh­ter and New York. There’s a lot to be learned by fol­low­ing else­where and we hope to im­prove our man­age­ment of sys­tems (re­gard­ing COVID- 19).”

He said the Gov­ern­ment’s al­so in touch with T&T’s over­seas mis­sions which all have “bat­tened down the hatch­es.” He said the New York area where Pene­lope Beck­les (Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed Na­tions) lived was among the first to fall un­der re­stric­tions.

De­spite all the de­sen­si­tis­ing new of the virus world­wide, Row­ley said the Cab­i­net has been func­tion­ing.

“I draw my strength from the peo­ple of T&T. I see so many good as­pects of how we’re cop­ing,” Row­ley added, be­stow­ing high praise on Chief Med­ical of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram and his team on how the is­sue has been han­dled.