Trinidad and To­ba­go is un­der a State of Emer­gency.

This is the last line of de­fence by the Gov­ern­ment as it at­tempts to sti­fle the surg­ing COVID-19 num­bers and deaths in the hope it will give the over­bur­dened health care sys­tem some much-need­ed breath­ing room.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the lat­est re­stric­tions at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

"I'm sor­ry that it has come to coffins and faces of dead peo­ple for us to re­alise that we are in and al­ways have been in a very dif­fi­cult place," Row­ley told the coun­try.

Row­ley said he had con­sult­ed with both the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Min­istry of Health be­fore mak­ing the de­ci­sion.

"From mid­night tonight (Sat­ur­day), Trinidad and To­ba­go will be un­der a State of Emer­gency," he said.

The SoE comes with a 9 pm to 5 am cur­few.

"If you don't have to be out for ex­empt­ed rea­sons, stay home un­der the force of law," Row­ley said.

"We will do what we have to do to fur­ther min­imise the op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­fec­tion and we are ex­pect­ing that with a pop­u­la­tion that is now even more re­spon­sive, that this is the time to take it se­ri­ous and take it per­son­al."

The Prime Min­is­ter said con­trary to what peo­ple be­lieve, it was not fea­si­ble to sim­ply shut down the coun­try.

"Even to be home, you need peo­ple to be out," he said.

Row­ley did not give a time-frame for the lift­ing of the SoE, but in­di­cat­ed that the length will be de­ter­mined by the re­sponse from the cit­i­zen­ry.

"None of us in this coun­try have ever been in a State of Emer­gency dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. Take that, use that as your guide," he said in re­sponse to ques­tions on when the SoE would end.

"This is not a com­par­i­son to an­oth­er State of Emer­gency, this sit­u­a­tion calls for this and the length of it will be de­ter­mined by the re­sponse. I am say­ing the more co­op­er­a­tive the re­sponse, the short­er will be the pe­ri­od.”

The last time the coun­try had a State of Emer­gency called was in Au­gust 2011 un­der the then Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, that SoE was called to ad­dress a spi­ralling crime sit­u­a­tion.

Just weeks ago, Row­ley said that an SoE and the in­her­ent loss of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights was un­nec­es­sary. On Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er, he de­fend­ed the change in that stance.

"All of that has been solved by me us­ing the State of Emer­gency, which is prop­er­ly en­sconced in the laws of T&T," he said.

"I didn't want to use the pro­vi­sion that is ex­ist­ing now in the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance be­cause not very many peo­ple give the re­spect to the or­di­nance that they give to the State of Emer­gency.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said that with lives at stake, he had to do all that was nec­es­sary to save those lives.

Row­ley said the num­bers of those lost to COVID-19 now had faces and were be­ing seen.

"So we no longer deal­ing with num­bers, we are deal­ing with 21 deaths in one day and if you bring that down to an hour, it's al­most one per­son dy­ing every hour. That is a fright­en­ing sit­u­a­tion," he said.

"If that is al­lowed to mul­ti­ply, very soon, we would be hap­py when it is on­ly 21 be­cause it can go to a place where 21 is a great im­prove­ment.

"Be­cause the more we are al­low­ing our­selves to be in­fect­ed, that pop­u­la­tion of in­fect­ed peo­ple would gen­er­ate a larg­er pop­u­la­tion of sick peo­ple and would gen­er­ate a larg­er pop­u­la­tion of dead peo­ple.”

Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith briefing Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds on the TTPS's operational plans for the State of Emergency which came into effect at midnight on Saturday. The meeting was held at the National Operations Fusion Centre in Port-of-Spain, on Saturday.

Picture TTPS

'We don't need the po­lice, we don't need the army, you know what needs to be done'

The Prime Min­is­ter praised the cit­i­zen­ry for their han­dling of the re­stric­tions and lock­downs last year but said that things were not the same this year.

"One year lat­er, it's a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. We now have vac­cines to be had, we know peo­ple who got sick and got over and of course, it's on­ly five peo­ple dead, one dead, some days no­body dead so we do what we want,” he said.

"As we are run­ning out of space, as more peo­ple are be­com­ing sick and a frac­tion of those peo­ple are re­quir­ing beds and beds are be­com­ing un­avail­able, we have to be even more co­op­er­a­tive than we were last year. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that is not what we have been hav­ing.”

Row­ley said he was not blam­ing any­one but sim­ply point­ing out the facts.

"We have a pop­u­la­tion that is scared," he said.

"I woke up to ad­vice that we should press the pan­ic but­ton. The ques­tion aris­es, is the state still in a po­si­tion to say that we will pro­vide health care to those who want it? What can­not be said is that we did not put arrange­ments in place for a rea­son­able re­sponse.”

The PM said that the num­bers giv­en by the Min­istry of Health were just part of the re­al sto­ry, as the num­bers could be worse.

"These are con­firmed cas­es that have come to the at­ten­tion of the health au­thor­i­ties," Row­ley said as he warned against peo­ple con­gre­gat­ing and rush­ing to the su­per­mar­kets af­ter his an­nounce­ment.

“It might be this evening, that when you rush­ing to pay for the gas that you rush for that you pick up COVID-19 and car­ry home to your grand­moth­er or your child. There is no need," he said.

"You may get COVID in a su­per­mar­ket where you end up in a crowd try­ing to get the last tin of salmon or what­ev­er you went for and how sen­si­ble would that have been?"

The Prime Min­is­ter said he will al­ways chose "life over liveli­hoods."

Dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion, mean­while, Tho­racic Med­ical Di­rec­tor at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal Dr Michelle Trot­man thanked the Prime Min­is­ter for call­ing the SoE say­ing it would help to freeze move­ment of cit­i­zens.

"And I beg the pop­u­la­tion to in­deed freeze. We don't need the po­lice, we don't need the army, you know what needs to be done," Trot­man said.

"We in the health field is say­ing our backs are break­ing.”

Trot­man said there were more than 4,000 peo­ple at home with the virus and while some were asymp­to­matic, oth­ers were ill.

"We have to re­spond to these peo­ple al­so," she said.

She said that the step-down fa­cil­i­ties gave health of­fi­cials a chance to "catch their breath" and gave them room to deal with acute care pa­tients.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that as a long­time fol­low­er of ca­lyp­so, two ca­lyp­so­ni­ans had come to his aid. He said Broth­er Mu­da­da, who said “De ting doh care” in his song, was the first.

"So un­der­stand that no­body is ex­empt­ed from this," Row­ley said.

"And De­von Seales has come to my aid to ap­peal to you when he says in his ca­lyp­so ‘Don’t jack­ass de ting,’” Row­ley added.

Ex­emp­tions:

Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty

Min­istry of Health

Min­istry of En­er­gy

Ports and Air­ports.

All ten­ta­cles of the food sup­ply chain.

Phar­ma­cies

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