No street food vend­ing, lim­it­ed open­ing hours for es­sen­tial ser­vices and a shut­down of all re­tail ser­vices have been in­sti­tut­ed once again as the Gov­ern­ment hopes to curb the climb­ing num­bers of COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients.

The new re­stric­tions, an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day, came in­to ef­fect at mid­night last night in the hopes that lim­it­ed move­ment and con­gre­gat­ing would trig­ger a dip in the num­bers af­ter health of­fi­cials an­nounced that the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem was ten days away from col­lapse.

Gro­ceries, phar­ma­cies and oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vices will func­tion on lim­it­ed hours be­tween 6 am to 8 pm.

Last Thurs­day, Row­ley an­nounced that all restau­rants would be closed for three weeks un­til May 23.

At that time he did not touch street vend­ing but yes­ter­day ex­plained that any busi­ness that at­tracts peo­ple would have to be sus­pend­ed and re­vised on May 23.

On Sat­ur­day Row­ley had said that there was no need to touch street food ven­dors. At that time he said that peo­ple would al­ways find some­one else to blame for the COVID-19 spike.

Guardian Me­dia had reached out to the Prime Min­is­ter to find out whether the num­ber of peo­ple con­gre­gat­ing at street vend­ing sites would trig­ger an­oth­er sus­pen­sion of that ser­vice.

“They don’t have to be,” he said in a text re­sponse.

He said that peo­ple would con­tin­ue to op­er­ate how they want­ed de­spite the warn­ings.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley addresses yesterday’s news conference at the Diplomatic Centre.

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How­ev­er, yes­ter­day it was part of the re­stric­tions that will take place with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

“’As of mid­night tonight (Mon­day), all food ser­vice will be dis­con­tin­ued and that in­cludes street food sell­ing—all. I am sure there would be in­con­ve­nience here but the corol­lary to that is that I am sure most peo­ple if not all, in this pan­dem­ic, in this cri­sis that is brew­ing, that you can feed your­self at home,” he said.

Row­ley ad­mit­ted that he did not an­tic­i­pate that when he shut down restau­rants that con­sumers would flock in large num­bers for street ven­dors.

“I al­so refuse to be­lieve that in a pan­dem­ic, where death is our por­tion, to ac­cept that we can­not do what has to be done to get by un­til May 23,” he said.

“These re­stric­tions are re­quired to sat­is­fy the need to re­spond to the virus which does not come out if you do not have to and do not con­gre­gate if you do come out,” he said.

“Stay home on­ly for a while. It is not for the rest of your life. If we do it right then we would be able to go back to a sit­u­a­tion of greater mix­ing,” he said.

“If it is not ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial then please don’t come out be­cause then you be­come part of the prob­lem,” he said.

“If you are en­gaged in a busi­ness that at­tracts peo­ple out or at­tract them to con­gre­gate then that is al­so part of the prob­lem,” he said.

Row­ley said that while the med­i­cine was bit­ter if the coun­try did not take it, “the wages of this is death for some peo­ple”.

He added that the new re­stric­tions would be en­forced “vig­or­ous­ly”.

“Those two ac­tions are fa­cil­i­ta­tors of the in­fec­tion rate in­crease. So it mat­ters not what you are en­gaged in but if you are en­gaged in an ac­tiv­i­ty that fa­cil­i­tates the move­ment of peo­ple or the gath­er­ing of peo­ple. The Gov­ern­ment has to see that as an area of re­stric­tion,” he said.

“It is against that back­ground that we made the in­ter­ven­tions last Thurs­day, to re­duce the num­ber of peo­ple that are com­ing out there, all for good rea­sons at the per­son­al lev­el, every­body could tell you what the good rea­son that they are out,” he said.

Aping Traders and Wonderful World gates are closed after closing time on Fredercick Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

“But the re­quire­ment is that we want you not to come out if you don’t have to,” he said.

He said that the re­stric­tions would help bring us back to some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy.

“These mea­sures give us the best chance and if this does not work, I ask you, what is the next step?” he asked.

“One op­tion that is not avail­able is to do noth­ing,” he said.

Row­ley al­so said yes­ter­day that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was work­ing on fig­ures which in­clud­ed the se­nior cit­i­zens’ grant which sup­ports 107,000 peo­ple at a cost of $4 bil­lion.

So­cial as­sis­tance for 19,000 peo­ple car­ried a $490 mil­lion bill.

The gov­ern­ment is al­so look­ing to con­tin­ue the food card sys­tem for 30,000 peo­ple which car­ried a $185 mil­lion price tag.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is al­so mak­ing a $10 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal in­sti­tu­tions to as­sist those in need with­in their com­mu­ni­ties. —Renu­ka Singh