The lim­it on gath­er­ings due to COVID-19’s ar­rival in Trinidad and To­ba­go is now ten peo­ple and less and a crack­down’s com­ing on bars and riv­er lim­ing.

Gov­ern­ment is al­so de­ter­min­ing whether bars which con­tin­ue to open pose a pub­lic health threat and could lose their li­cens­es for this breach. In­struc­tions are al­so be­ing is­sued to re­strict ac­cess to Cau­ra and oth­er riv­er lime lo­ca­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced this on Wednes­day as Gov­ern­ment sought to re­in­force ap­peals against con­gre­gat­ing in a bid to stop the virus’ spread.

Row­ley spoke at a me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, which fol­lowed an­oth­er spe­cial Cab­i­net meet­ing, where sev­er­al min­is­ters an­nounced mea­sures to deal with the fall­out from the virus reach­ing these shores. Teams work­ing on the is­sue in­volved fi­nance, bank­ing and in­sur­ance, trade and busi­ness and so­cial sup­port. Min­is­ters de­tailed mea­sures to pre­serve jobs and as­sist busi­ness and low-in­come earn­ers.

In the last week, sev­en im­port­ed COVID-19 cas­es were con­firmed. The lat­est cas­es were two women who flew in from Guade­loupe af­ter a cruise they were on was banned from en­ter­ing Mar­tinique be­cause of sus­pect­ed cas­es on board the ves­sel. A 26-year-old East Trinidad ath­lete who re­cent­ly re­turned from Eu­rope and a 52-year-old busi­ness­man who re­turned from Switzer­land are al­so among the cas­es.

Row­ley said he was pleased the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has been pay­ing at­ten­tion to what’s been said on the is­sue and most cit­i­zens were tak­ing health pro­fes­sion­als’ ap­peals se­ri­ous­ly. But he said that wasn’t to say there weren’t peo­ple who still be­lieve it’s a joke. He said all of T&T must un­der­stand that suc­cess or fail­ure in the sit­u­a­tion “... might de­pend on you at the per­son­al lev­el.”

Cab­i­net yes­ter­day agreed gath­er­ings should be ten peo­ple or less, a re­duc­tion from 25 ini­tial­ly.

De­spite Gov­ern­ment’s call for bars to close to pre­vent virus spread, Row­ley said he un­der­stood some bars were still open­ing.

“Who feel they can ig­nore the guide­lines, re­quests and in­struc­tions...peo­ple who be­lieve that since they don’t have to go to work or school, the place to be is in a riv­er lime do­ing ex­act­ly what they’ve been asked not to do - con­gre­gate,” he said.

“This lev­el of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is be­ing not­ed and will not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue un­abat­ed be­cause at the end of the day, we do have some heavy ‘hands’ we can bring to bear on such be­hav­iour. So far we’ve been get­ting the job done with­out that and I’d like to be­lieve we can con­tin­ue with­out it.”

He added, “For those peo­ple go­ing to bars and those bars open­ing and en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to con­gre­gate and there­fore pose a pub­lic health threat to the peo­ple, I’ve asked the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and oth­er rel­e­vant of­fi­cials to de­ter­mine whether pos­ing of a pub­lic health threat al­so pos­es a threat to the li­cense of those bars. We’re ex­plor­ing that now and we’ll not hes­i­tate to take ac­tion where ac­tion is avail­able.”

For those who have to go to Cau­ra Riv­er and else­where, he said he’ll ask the rel­e­vant min­is­ter to ask Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies to re­strict ac­cess to the riv­er.

“We’re ask­ing peo­ple to do what’s sen­si­ble if not on­ly for your be­half but for those to whom you pose a threat,” he said.

“Those who will have a won­der­ful time at the riv­er lime or by the bar...just re­mem­ber you could be the per­son tak­ing the pathogen home to your moth­er, fa­ther or sick child.”

He said the call ex­tend­ed to beach-go­ing since this could pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for virus spread. He al­so warmed against con­gre­gat­ing/lim­ing at home.

Row­ley said he knows the sit­u­a­tion is hard.

“I find my­self a lot of times... you know...it’s au­to­mat­ic to shake hands, but that’s a no-no. Some­times you want to greet some­one but you re­mem­ber, no kiss­ing,” he said.

“We’re not talk­ing about pe­nal­is­ing any­one, but peo­ple should be aware of not do­ing things to spread in­fec­tion ... your in­fec­tion is my in­fec­tion.”

Row­ley as­sured stu­dents will have their SEA and CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions lat­er bar­ring un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances. He said SEA may be in May but he wouldn’t say for sure yet since the virus was pro­ject­ed to peak around that time.

He said Gov­ern­ment was un­sure when the sit­u­a­tion would end. In­for­ma­tion in­di­cat­ed that over this month and April in­to May the virus would be at peak but Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­gen­cies are for in­ter­ven­tion over that pe­ri­od. But he said oth­er ex­perts feel it could last as long as 18 months.

“I hope that fore­cast (18 months) isn’t the one we’re deal­ing with,” the PM said.

Say­ing T&T was in an un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion, he added that shut­ting the coun­try down wasn’t fea­si­ble. How­ev­er, Row­ley said T&T was in a much bet­ter po­si­tion than some US ar­eas where peo­ple have to stay home for three weeks.