Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day an­nounced longer, tighter COVID-19 “lock­down” mea­sures to keep the pub­lic from pos­si­ble ex­po­sure.

Start­ing this morn­ing, the “Stay-at-Home” man­date has been ex­tend­ed to April 30, in­clud­ing for schools, cur­tailed op­er­at­ing hours for non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es and there’s now com­plete clo­sure of food places.

This as Gov­ern­ment’s COVID-19 bat­tle moved to the lev­el of seek­ing to cur­tail com­mu­ni­ty spread.

In an­nounc­ing the ex­ten­sion and changes at yes­ter­day’s dai­ly COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­plained, “We’re re­mov­ing peo­ple from hav­ing to come out to get things and tak­ing steps to put more peo­ple in­doors un­til April 30. This is how we’re aim­ing not to walk the road oth­ers have walked as they missed this mile­stone.”

The first “Stay Home” man­date was up to April 15. But Row­ley yes­ter­day said when he last spoke on COVID mea­sures he’d hint­ed Gov­ern­ment would have eval­u­at­ed the po­si­tion go­ing for­ward and make nec­es­sary ad­just­ments as re­quired.

He added, “...Clear­ly, we’re not go­ing to be in a po­si­tion on April 15 to be able to tell the pub­lic you can come out and re­turn to some re­sem­blance of nor­mal­cy. It’s the oth­er way around. We ex­pect by April 15, it’s quite like­ly, cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble, we may be in a worse sit­u­a­tion than we were on the first of the 15 days of stay­ing home.”

Top of his an­nounce­ment—ef­fec­tive from yes­ter­day—he rec­om­mend­ed peo­ple wear masks cov­er­ing their mouths and nos­trils, where the virus can en­ter. Gov­ern­ment will be dis­trib­ut­ing masks to the pub­lic soon. The Op­po­si­tion on Sun­day said it’s hav­ing masks made for those who don’t have.

Oth­er changes in Gov­ern­ment’s short­er, tighter arrange­ment up to April 30 in­clude:

• All restau­rants/food ser­vices closed com­plete­ly.

• The pro­hi­bi­tion in­cludes vend­ing, ven­dors who move around and street food ven­dors.

• Re­tail dis­count stores, mar­kets, su­per­mar­kets, fruit stalls, shops, veg­etable stalls, bak­eries, par­lours, pro­vid­ing food or med­i­cine/ne­ces­si­ties will close by 6 pm dai­ly.

• Whole­sale stores pro­vid­ing food, drugs, ne­ces­si­ties will close by 4 pm dai­ly.

• Hard­ware/plumb­ing/elec­tri­cal busi­ness­es open from 8 am to noon, Mon­days to Sat­ur­days.

• Phar­ma­cies will close by 8 pm.

• The pro­ject­ed April 20 date for school re­open­ing now post­poned to April 30. The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry was de­ter­min­ing yes­ter­day when school may re­open and a SEA ex­am date. A re­cent­ly pro­ject­ed May ex­am date isn’t fea­si­ble.

• Re­li­gious ser­vices/gath­er­ings where 10 peo­ple were al­lowed now cut to five.

• Clo­sure of al­co­hol re­tail con­tin­ues, save in gro­ceries, su­per­mar­kets.

Of the new arrange­ment, Row­ley said, “Peo­ple will have time at home to pre­pare your own food, but more im­por­tant­ly, it’ll re­move a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple from hav­ing to come out to get food.”

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Roshan Paras­ram said street food is deemed a prob­lem to coun­ty health. Row­ley added that au­thor­i­ties are now con­cerned about com­mu­ni­ty spread and was seek­ing cer­tain clo­sures to re­duce ex­po­sure and the po­ten­tial for in­fec­tion. He said con­ver­sa­tions about who could sell food had al­so be­come a “mat­ter of eth­i­cal ex­ploita­tion by some who have no in­ten­tion to help us.”

He said, “Where we at in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it’s rea­son­able to as­sume the peo­ple around you could be car­ry­ing this virus. It’s be­cause of this po­ten­tial we’re try­ing to min­imise ex­po­sure so what you’re fear­ful of doesn’t hap­pen.”

On the changes, he added, “It’s not a ques­tion of pre­serv­ing your com­fort zone, or earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty, or equal­is­ing co-eth­nic be­hav­iour, or ac­cept­ing, or ex­ploit­ing po­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate may­hem—it’s sim­ply a ques­tion of whether we live or we die.”

Row­ley cit­ed analy­ses of the lat­est de­lib­er­a­tions and ad­vice from tech­ni­cal ex­perts. This in­di­cates T&T is at the point where con­trol can be lost. Au­thor­i­ties didn’t know how many peo­ple (or who) hadn’t trav­elled were in the COVID cat­e­go­ry but they knew they’re “out there.” He said data­bas­es in­di­cat­ed there has to be con­cern on that new de­vel­op­ment.

Row­ley said ad­di­tion­al ac­tion will be tak­en to in­ten­si­fy com­pli­ance on the Stay Home ex­ten­sion and changes.