Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment may be un­like­ly to post­pone next Mon­day’s gen­er­al elec­tion even though 12 more COVID-19 cas­es were re­port­ed yes­ter­day but fur­ther mea­sures may be an­nounced to­day to pro­tect the pub­lic from the virus, top PNM sources said yes­ter­day.

They spoke af­ter an an­nounce­ment that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will hold a me­dia brief­ing at noon to­day.

Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to up­date the pub­lic on what more may be done to curb spread and is like­ly to give an up­date on the Au­gust 20 SEA ex­am­i­na­tion and oth­er mat­ters, the source added.

When cas­es be­gan in­creas­ing last week, Row­ley had said if T&T con­tin­ues to have the same num­bers go­ing for­ward, more dras­tic ac­tion will have to be tak­en. He’d said Gov­ern­ment was in watch mode, to make de­ci­sions “if things go in cer­tain di­rec­tions.”

T&T be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a sec­ond wave of COVID cas­es in the last two weeks with sev­er­al clus­ter cas­es. T&T’s to­tal was 169 last Fri­day. The Health Min­istry re­port­ed that the to­tal num­ber stood at 194 as of yes­ter­day evening.

So far 11 schools have been closed due to COVID ex­po­sure.

Yes­ter­day, PNM of­fi­cials said it was un­like­ly the elec­tion would be post­poned.

Af­ter cas­es be­gan in­creas­ing last Fri­day, Gov­ern­ment re­vert­ed the num­bers of peo­ple al­lowed to con­gre­gate in groups from the re­cent fig­ure of 25 to the ini­tial lock­down lim­it of ten peo­ple.

The Pub­lic Ser­vice was al­so man­dat­ed to have staffers work in re­duced num­bers. The roll­back was de­scribed as the fun­da­men­tal re­sponse to re­duc­ing the num­ber of peo­ple ex­posed. How­ev­er, the num­bers of peo­ple at­tend­ing church­es, fu­ner­als and work­ing in­doors with so­cial dis­tanc­ing re­mained un­touched.

Row­ley had al­so said Gov­ern­ment was keep­ing an eye on the SEA ex­am as con­tact trac­ing con­tin­ues and if the COVID trend con­tin­ued in “any sig­nif­i­cant way, next Mon­day or Tues­day” Gov­ern­ment would “act on the school sys­tem.’’

On the planned Sep­tem­ber 1 school re­open­ing, he’d said if there was no SEA there would be no re­sults to have stu­dents en­ter new schools. The cur­rent rise in cas­es has prompt­ed spec­u­la­tion the SEA may be post­poned.

Last week, Row­ley al­so said Gov­ern­ment would ob­serve the sit­u­a­tion with pub­lic trans­port and that may have re­quired in­ter­ven­tion “if the trend in the next 72 hours in­to next week con­tin­ues.”

When busi­ness re­opened in June, pub­lic trans­port was al­lowed to move from car­ry­ing half pas­sen­ger loads with win­dows down, up to full ca­pac­i­ty. Ve­hi­cles are cur­rent­ly mov­ing with full pas­sen­ger loads, win­dows up and A/C units blast­ing.

Row­ley had al­so said bars and restau­rants would be mon­i­tored. Health au­thor­i­ties had point­ed out that sev­er­al new COVID cas­es be­came in­fect­ed in bars. He’d said any­time fur­ther in­for­ma­tion was ob­tained on this con­tin­u­ing, Gov­ern­ment would act to fur­ther re­duce pub­lic ex­po­sure. Bars are cur­rent­ly open un­til 8 pm.

The day af­ter the mea­sures were an­nounced and Row­ley had to ap­peal to cit­i­zens—es­pe­cial­ly South­ern­ers, some of whom he said were not ob­serv­ing COVID pro­to­cols—and he had to again call for peo­ple not to con­gre­gate or as­sem­ble in large groups. Yes­ter­day, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said South was at risk since four schools there had to be closed re­cent­ly due to COVID ex­po­sure.

He es­pe­cial­ly ap­pealed to UNC mem­bers and sup­port­ers to stop or­gan­is­ing large groups of peo­ple to walk around neigh­bour­hoods. He said this ac­tion pro­vides fer­tile con­di­tions to fu­el out­break of the virus. Row­ley said there were many oth­er ways to reach the elec­torate.

Pres­i­dent says post­pon­ing polls is Govt’s call

On Ju­ly 31, the Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) group had ap­pealed to Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes to post­pone the up­com­ing elec­tion in the in­ter­est of cit­i­zens’ health and safe­ty. FFOS stat­ed yes­ter­day a re­ply was re­ceived from Weekes on Mon­day.

In that let­ter, the Pres­i­dent’s of­fice ex­plained that the Pres­i­dent shared T&T’s con­cern giv­en the in­crease of COVID cas­es and that pub­lic safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of life is of para­mount con­sid­er­a­tion.

The Pres­i­dent’s let­ter stat­ed that in any case of post­pone­ment of an elec­tion the first step has to be tak­en by the Ex­ec­u­tive and “Her Ex­cel­len­cy’s dis­cre­tion is in­voked there­after.” It was not­ed that Gov­ern­ment could ad­journ polling day in the event of any emer­gency as stat­ed in the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act (34 (1)). The let­ter al­so stat­ed any post­pone­ment could on­ly be for 30 days.

FFOS yes­ter­day stat­ed, “Giv­en that the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer has con­firmed that (Mon­day) alone we have 10 new pos­i­tive cas­es of COVID-19, FFOS re­spect­ful­ly calls on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to care­ful­ly con­sid­er the risks in­volved in hold­ing an elec­tion dur­ing this sec­ond wave. Is it worth risk­ing pub­lic health while the virus is es­ca­lat­ing with lo­cal spread?”

“The Hong Kong Gov­ern­ment has tak­en lead and has post­poned its Sep­tem­ber’s par­lia­men­tary elec­tions by a year, say­ing it is nec­es­sary amid a rise in coro­n­avirus in­fec­tions. FFOS is ap­peal­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter to post­pone or de­fer the elec­tion for thir­ty days and to im­me­di­ate­ly call for a na­tion­al lock­down to con­trol the spread of COVID-19. Pub­lic health must be our first pri­or­i­ty.’’