Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The num­ber of peo­ple now al­lowed to gath­er in pub­lic spaces was re­duced from 10 to five yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing an amend­ment to the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance gov­ern­ing the “Stay-at-Home” mea­sures to com­bat the spread of COVID-19.

“This num­ber is not a group that is to­geth­er. So in pub­lic places that are not deemed es­sen­tial—for ex­am­ple su­per­mar­kets, banks, (and) phar­ma­cies- in pub­lic places, per­sons are not al­lowed in more than five,” Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence host­ed by the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day.

“We are do­ing this in or­der to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Young said the changes would be ef­fect­ed im­me­di­ate­ly by Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

The change was made to sec­tion 3 (1)(b)(i) of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance mea­sures for COVID-19 which went in­to ef­fect at mid­night Sun­day and will re­main in ef­fect un­til April 15 in the first in­stance. Ac­cord­ing to the reg­u­la­tions, any­one who “con­tra­venes these reg­u­la­tions com­mits an of­fence and is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of fifty thou­sand dol­lars and im­pris­on­ment for a term of six months.”

The sail­ings of the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice are al­so go­ing to be al­tered, Young said. The T&T Spir­it will be tak­en off the route while the Galleons Pas­sage and Jean de Valette will con­tin­ue ser­vic­ing the seabridge but each ves­sel will on­ly make “one trip, back and forth, per day.” The Cabo Star will con­tin­ue its voy­ages as nor­mal, Young said, adding this de­ci­sion was made af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter-is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TTIT) fur­ther ex­plained the T&T Spir­it will be tak­en out of ser­vice from to­mor­row.

The Jean de Valette will de­part from Port-of-Spain at 4 pm and Scar­bor­ough at 7.30 am on Mon­days, Tues­days, Thurs­days, Fri­days, Sat­ur­days and Sun­days while the Galleons Pas­sage will de­part from Port-of-Spain at 8 am and Scar­bor­ough at 4 pm on Wednes­days. The Cabo Star, mean­while, will de­part Port-of-Spain at 1 pm and Scar­bor­ough at 11 pm on Mon­days, Tues­days, Wednes­days, Thurs­days, Fri­days and Sun­days. It will not be sched­uled to sail on Sat­ur­days and pub­lic hol­i­days.