SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh will seek the ad­vice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi on whether the wear­ing of face masks in pub­lic should be­come law.

The is­sue of whether the wear­ing of masks in pub­lic places by cit­i­zens dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic should be­come manda­to­ry was put to Deyals­ingh dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health press con­fer­ence.

Deyals­ingh said such a move would re­quire the in­ter­ven­tion of Al-Rawi since it would en­tail mak­ing it law to get every­one to com­ply in the first in­stance. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted it would be a hard sell.

“With a law, there are go­ing to be sanc­tions. If you do that, then the ques­tion aris­es what is the penal­ty? Are you go­ing to charge every­body on Fred­er­ick Street ...in Scar­bor­ough who is not wear­ing a mask?”

The top­ic, Deyals­ingh said, was a dif­fi­cult one for him to de­cide on.

“That is why most coun­tries are strong­ly rec­om­mend­ing the wear­ing of masks. And I will seek the ad­vice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al be­cause what you are propos­ing is to make it il­le­gal not to wear a mask and that is a dif­fi­cult sub­ject for me to ad­dress off the bat here this morn­ing.”

Asked if some peo­ple have not been ad­her­ing to phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, while oth­ers have not been con­form­ing to the Stay-at-Home or­ders and at­tend­ing COVID-19 par­ties, Deyals­ingh said yes.

On Sun­day, a re­port­ed COVID-19 par­ty in La Cuevas end­ed in tragedy when Crys­tal Ca­zoe lost her life and sev­er­al oth­ers were in­jured when the ve­hi­cle they were re­turn­ing home in crashed along the North Coast Road in Las Cuevas.

“You see it all over...not on­ly here but all over the world,” Deyals­ingh said.

He said phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing was now part of the new nor­mal.

“In my own case, I have not seen my son for a month now. We have been talk­ing on the phone. He lives in Trinidad. It is go­ing to take a par­a­digm shift to adapt to the new nor­mal and the coro­n­avirus the same way we adapt­ed to HIV.”

Deyals­ingh al­so said the min­istry would restart elec­tive surg­eries which they had put on hold last month.

“We are go­ing to be work­ing on a na­tion­al plan for men­tal health is­sues com­ing out of COVID....how are peo­ple deal­ing with con­fine­ment and de­pres­sion.”

He said the min­istry had a frame­work for the na­tion­al plan which the pub­lic will be in­formed about.

Deyals­ingh al­so steered clear from say­ing what would hap­pen to Car­ni­val 2021 if a vac­cine for the virus was not de­vel­oped by then.

“That bridge will be crossed when we come to it,” he said.