Three more months. That’s how long Government feels it needs the State of Emergency to continue in T&T in an effort to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it is having on the society.
During yesterday’s debate, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh revealed that there are now eight children in hospital with severe cases of the virus. Two of the children are at the Caura facility, three at Couva and another three at Point Fortin.
The Health Minister sought to make a nexus between the children contracting the virus and the partying and social congregation of parents but provided no further evidence on the issue, save to say that the Government needed to protect children from such occurrences.
The Health Minister also failed to tell the Parliament what type of congregation the parents were allegedly involved in that led to the contraction of the virus. Was it congregating at a supermarket, a lime, or even while trying to get the vaccine?
This paper is fully behind Government’s numerous efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 and in the rollout of its vaccination programme meant to save lives.
We have consistently used this space to urge the population to get inoculated so the country can reach herd immunity, exhale and see the complete reopening of our economy.
Who among us is not tired of these masks, the inability to go to the movies, take a drink at a bar with friends, go to the gym or see a return to competitive sport?
Who among us does not feel a sense of longing when we see football and cricket in the UK with thousands of unmasked supporters confident that they are going be fine because the country has herd immunity from the very vaccines that are available to the general population and can be administered safely and effectively?
With this in mind, we must tell the Minister of Health that if adults are indeed responsible for spreading the virus to their children, the country needs some more information to ensure that what he is saying is correct.
Very early in the various versions of lockdowns, there were the many “Zesser” and “Wesser” parties and incidents of breaches of the public health ordinances but it’s either the police have reduced their monitoring of these parties, or they have been significantly reduced due to the State of Emergency and the inability of people to move around between 9 pm and 5 am.
In these circumstances, it’s one thing to make the argument for an extension of the SoE but to do so by pointing to parents infecting their children after partying with little evidence is unfortunate.
As for the SoE, we are not against its extension as long as it helps in the reduction of COVID-19.
But it cannot be that living with COVID-19 means living with our rights being limited.