GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Even if an­oth­er 90-day State of Emer­gency (SoE ) was ap­proved, Gov­ern­ment in­tends to dis­con­tin­ue the SoE at the first and ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty once it won’t in­crease COVID-19 risk and it’s med­ical­ly safe and rea­son­able to end it.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley gave that as­sur­ance in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day while pi­lot­ing a mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE to No­vem­ber 30. It re­quired on­ly Gov­ern­ment votes for pas­sage and was even­tu­al­ly passed with a vote of 21 for on the Gov­ern­ment’s side, none against and 18 ab­sten­tions from the Op­po­si­tion side.

Row­ley, who de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s pan­dem­ic han­dling and in­sti­tu­tion of the SoE, said the on­ly rea­son for the ex­ten­sion is to pre­vent fur­ther virus spread, be­tween a pe­ri­od of the cur­few “to be de­ter­mined,” peo­ple will be en­cour­aged not to con­gre­gate and so­cialise at night.

“At the end of the day, we want to be able to pre­serve lives and keep hos­pi­tals from over­flow­ing, keep doc­tors and nurs­es from be­ing over­worked and keep peo­ple at the jobs they’ve been al­lowed to re­turn to.

“I want to give this as­sur­ance that at the first op­por­tu­ni­ty that is med­ical­ly safe and en­cour­aged, this Gov­ern­ment will dis­con­tin­ue this SoE, even if Par­lia­ment ap­proves this SoE for 90 days, where it’s rea­son­able to do so with­out ex­pos­ing the pop­u­la­tion, we’ll end it right then and there,” Row­ley said.

He said tech­ni­cal ex­perts’ ad­vice is that T&T is at a dan­ger­ous place and by slack­ness, mis­in­for­ma­tion or mis­be­hav­iour, could end up with a sud­den case in­crease, as hap­pened in May, that could lead to “... hav­ing to do what we did be­fore. But the last thing we want is to lock­down again to save lives.”

Row­ley spoke against a back­ground of horn-toot­ing by mo­torists who were protest­ing the ex­ten­sion as they passed the Red House. A group of peo­ple al­so protest­ed on the pave­ment out­side the build­ing. Protest nois­es could be heard in­side the Par­lia­ment cham­ber.

The protests were in re­sponse to UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s call for peo­ple to air their op­po­si­tion to the ex­ten­sion with horn toot­ing and head­light flash­ing. Apart from out­side of Par­lia­ment, protests oc­curred in Fyz­abad; Av­o­cat; cer­tain Curepe lo­ca­tions; Munroe Road, Ch­agua­nas; Pe­nal and parts of San Fer­nan­do.

Row­ley, in de­bate, re­count­ed the dai­ly COVID case in­creas­es since April. Pro­jec­tions then were that if the pub­lic con­tin­ued nor­mal in­ter­ac­tion, T&T would have had a ma­jor cri­sis. Con­se­quent­ly, the SoE was in­sti­tut­ed with a 9 pm to 5 am cur­few to pre­vent spread by sup­press­ing so­cial­is­ing that oc­curs over that time.

He said pro­jec­tions were cor­rect. Cas­es ac­com­pa­nied by deaths reached high­est point “and could have gone a lot high­er. If we didn’t in­ter­vene to dis­cour­age so­cial­is­ing, it most cer­tain­ly would have gone much worse.”

Row­ley said T&T came very close to hav­ing hos­pi­tals over­whelmed but avoid­ed that as with the SoE, in­fec­tions re­duced over June-Ju­ly. But he said num­bers seen to­day aren’t the to­tal sto­ry, since that had to be con­sid­ered with how many peo­ple got in­fect­ed from one case - and that showed up over 14 days.

De­spite a plateau­ing of cas­es, T&T hasn’t re­turned to pre-SoE lev­els, he said, adding he’d been look­ing for­ward to the SoE’s end, es­pe­cial­ly to give po­lice, nurs­es and doc­tors a rest. But he said when Gov­ern­ment looked at where T&T is af­ter the 90 days, it’s not at a point to dis­pense with the SoE.

“If we do that, it’s more like­ly the re­spons­es from the pub­lic will see us hav­ing high­er com­mu­ni­ty spread, lead­ing to an­oth­er phase of ac­tiv­i­ty which will force Gov­ern­ment to take firmer ac­tion,” he said.

To pro­tect against this, he said T&T may need to pay the price and give up night­time so­cial­i­sa­tion “… it’s the on­ly rea­son we’re seek­ing ex­ten­sion.”

“I’m not in pos­ses­sion of any da­ta, none what­so­ev­er, that’s not been made pub­lic by the med­ical ex­perts that put in­for­ma­tion in­to the pub­lic do­main to guide us through this very trou­ble­some process.”

He said the cur­rent plateau doesn’t en­cour­age end­ing the SoE.

While some sec­tors were re­turned, he said if T&T didn’t main­tain its work, it can end up with run­away in­fec­tion as in May, “then we’d be start­ing from a much high­er in­fec­tion lev­el and will more quick­ly reach the stage we had in June and go high­er.”

“We have to be very care­ful that things that help virus spread – doesn’t have its way. So we’re ask­ing an ex­ten­sion to en­cour­age peo­ple through force of law not to con­gre­gate at night and pre­serve this plateau – bet­ter still, re­duce it to low­er lev­els. If we con­trol our­selves a lit­tle longer, we’ll strength­en our po­si­tion,” he said, not­ing the po­ten­tial for the Delta vari­ant.

So far, he said sys­tems al­lowed Gov­ern­ment to iden­ti­fy it, catch­ing it on the bor­der.

“Had we not tak­en ex­perts’ ad­vice, we’d be in that vari­ant’s hands.”

“Based on where we are, came from and could go, if we could re­duce for a while longer our noc­tur­nal ac­tiv­i­ties ... what’s in­tend­ed is a re­stric­tion of this at night, even among fam­i­lies - we want to en­cour­age that a lit­tle more.”

Urg­ing the pub­lic to ac­cept that there’s in­con­ve­nience, he added, “We now call on you to give up the so­cial­i­sa­tion at night for a good rea­son.”