From mid­night on Sun­day (March 29) to April 15, cit­i­zens who are clas­si­fied as “non-es­sen­tial” will be re­quired to stay at home. Should civil­ians ig­nore the warn­ing, they will feel the full brunt of the law, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, an­nounc­ing deep­er COVID-19 mea­sures.

“Come Sun­day night, we are in­creas­ing our sep­a­ra­tion. We are ask­ing peo­ple to stay at home un­der the ex­ist­ing le­gal arrange­ments. What I have an­nounced is an up­grade of a stay at home,” the PM said.

He in­sist­ed the move was not a de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of emer­gency or lock­down but not­ed the first stay at home had ini­tial­ly ap­plied to those seek­ing 14 days self-iso­la­tion.

“The first or­der was if your were gen­uine­ly S-I-C-K. Now, if you are S-I-Q you stay home now - which means sep­a­rate, iso­late and quar­an­tine. This arrange­ment that I am an­nounc­ing goes un­til April 15.”

Row­ley said any ac­tiv­i­ty deemed non-es­sen­tials will not be tol­er­at­ed.

“Non-es­sen­tials we ex­pect to stay home. We are go­ing to cat­e­gorise it in such a way that we iden­ti­fy a large block of the pop­u­la­tion that is not es­sen­tial. And if you are not es­sen­tial, from Sun­day night stay home.”

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the Gov­ern­ment has been fight­ing against the spread of the virus.

“So what we are try­ing to do is re­strict the move­ment of per­sons in T&T, be­cause af­ter say­ing many times that peo­ple should stay at home, ob­vi­ous­ly, the call has not been heed­ed.”

The PM said this was the on­ly sen­si­ble re­sponse in bat­tling COVID-19 which took the life of US na­tion­al Hansel Leon on Wednes­day.

“You see the lim­ing and con­gre­gat­ing ... the po­lice will en­force the law. I sim­ply want to ap­peal to every cit­i­zen not to be a prob­lem by caus­ing the po­lice to have to act against you.”

The po­lice, Row­ley said, will be backed by the T&T De­fence Force. He urged the pop­u­la­tion not to rush to the su­per­mar­kets and re­sort to pan­ic buy­ing in the next two days but to be pre­pared for what is to come.

“I am not de­clar­ing a state of emer­gency. There are laws and reg­u­la­tions in place now that can cause our se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices to en­force no gath­er­ing and to en­force the kinds of sep­a­ra­tion that we are ask­ing for.”

Row­ley said while some quar­ters have been call­ing for a to­tal lock­down, the coun­try was not a light bulb that can be switched off, as crit­i­cal ser­vices in health, pub­lic util­i­ties, so­cial ser­vices, the air­ports and ports would be need­ed. The pri­vate sec­tor, he said, must re­main op­er­a­tional.

“We are fight­ing. The white flag stays down. So this lock­ing down of the coun­try, which is a fash­ion state­ment ... might be a fash­ion state­ment for some who want to get in on the act. For the Gov­ern­ment, we don’t deal with a fash­ion state­ment.”

Row­ley said they will deal with is­sues that are well thought out and or­gan­ised and to­day, the pub­lic will be pro­vid­ed with a com­pre­hen­sive list of the es­sen­tial ser­vices and en­ti­ties un­der which they fall.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will tell you which laws are go­ing to be en­forced,” he said, adding Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young will work with T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and De­fence Force to en­force the quar­an­tine law.

“We are at the stage now where joke is joke. This is no joke. Those peo­ple in this coun­try who fig­ure this is a joke ... this is about life and death and your fool­ish­ness will not be tol­er­at­ed.”

He again asked cit­i­zens to demon­strate re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour.

“If we are able to be as dis­ci­plined on this sit­u­a­tion as we were as dis­ci­plined in Panora­ma with the steel­bands, we will suc­ceed.”