While the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions were be­ing en­forced to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus for al­most the past two years, the fines gen­er­at­ed from those per­sons who were in breach of the reg­u­la­tions al­so raked in tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue for the State.

With the mask man­date, which be­came law in 2020 now set to come to end this month, in­for­ma­tion from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice re­veals that per­sons who were caught not wear­ing a mask gen­er­at­ed the most mon­ey in fines for breach­es of the health reg­u­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, over­all, more than $32 mil­lion in fines were gen­er­at­ed from face mask and safe zone vi­o­la­tions.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2020 and June this year, 27,664 no face-mask tick­ets were is­sued, while dur­ing Oc­to­ber 2021 and March 2022, 404 safe zone vi­o­la­tions were de­tect­ed.

Tick­ets for fail­ing to wear masks fluc­tu­at­ed, with the most, 1,949, is­sued in May 2021. How­ev­er, there was a dras­tic de­cline in tick­ets in May and June this year, with on­ly 20 and nine be­ing is­sued.

In to­tal, the TTPS in­di­cat­ed that 27,664 tick­ets were is­sued for fail­ing to wear face masks, gen­er­at­ing over $27 mil­lion - or $27,664,000 to be ex­act - in rev­enue.

Mean­while, dur­ing the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2021 and March 2022, 271 pa­trons and 133 pro­pri­etors were is­sued tick­ets for Safe Zone vi­o­la­tions. Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, the to­tal val­ue of the tick­ets was $4,680,000.

Mean­while, be­tween Sep­tem­ber 6, 2020 and Jan­u­ary 2022, there were 2,083 ar­rests for breach­es of the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions. How­ev­er, no ar­rests were made in Feb­ru­ary and March this year.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS da­ta, be­tween May 16 and De­cem­ber 31, 2021, the po­lice al­so made 2,134 ar­rests for breach of cur­few.

While Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced yes­ter­day that manda­to­ry face masks will no longer be in ef­fect in some spaces from Ju­ly 17, TTPS’ Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer Ag ASP Sheri­don Hill is warn­ing cit­i­zens they could still be fined $1,000 for breach­ing the law.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Hill said, “Some po­lice of­fi­cers may give you a chance, they may warn you, they have dis­cre­tion, it is a mi­nor of­fence. But the of­fi­cers who pros­e­cute you, they are not break­ing the law. They’re not do­ing any­thing that is wrong. They are not do­ing any­thing that is ex­ces­sive. They are sim­ply en­forc­ing the law, which is to the ben­e­fit of us all.”

The Min­is­ter, how­ev­er, said manda­to­ry mask-wear­ing will re­main in ef­fect at health fa­cil­i­ties and rec­om­men­da­tions will be made that some groups of peo­ple con­tin­ue to wear masks.