Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Gary Grif­fith chaired a se­cu­ri­ty meet­ing of all stake­hold­ers in­volved in the 2020 edi­tion of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 tour­na­ment which bowls off on Au­gust 18 in T&T. The en­tire com­pe­ti­tion will be played here and it ends on Sep­tem­ber 10.

Sat­ur­day's meet­ing was held at the Trinidad Hilton Ho­tel, where all six teams will be housed and which will be used as the tour­na­ment Bub­ble.

Among the stake­hold­ers at the meet­ing were the Min­istry of Health, Heads of Po­lice Di­vi­sions, Port-of-Spain and South­ern, the T&T De­fence Force, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Hilton and his se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, and CPL se­cu­ri­ty co­or­di­na­tors.

This meet­ing is on the heels of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounce­ment on Fri­day in which he as­sured the gen­er­al pub­lic that the CPL will not af­fect T&T.

"The CPL games are quite dif­fer­ent, that's a bub­ble," Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said at the Min­istry of Health news press con­fer­ence on Fri­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's. "Every­thing that will go on around the CPL will go on in a bub­ble that does not in­ter­act with the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion.

"They will come in­to the coun­try un­der the pro­to­cols of en­try, all hav­ing test­ed neg­a­tive be­fore. When they come here they are con­fined to the Hilton Ho­tel and that be­comes a bub­ble for them. Then they will go to a venue to play the game where they will not in­ter­act with the pop­u­la­tion and so the CPL is a bub­ble that has noth­ing to do with what goes on in the coun­try."

CoP Griffth is ad­vis­ing the pub­lic that all mea­sures are be­ing put in place to en­sure the health and safe­ty of all lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Grif­fith stat­ed: "All teams will have to un­der­go a quar­an­tine pe­ri­od of 14 days dur­ing which they will be mon­i­tored and test­ed by of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Health. All teams will be stay­ing un­der quar­an­tine at the Hilton."

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith said, "That all teams will be kept in san­i­tized zones which are termed "bub­bles". He points out that fans and fam­i­ly mem­bers will not be al­lowed to vis­it train­ing ses­sions, match­es, or the ho­tel. No spec­ta­tors will be al­lowed at the venues dur­ing the games."

The tour­na­ment, fea­tur­ing the six fran­chise teams - the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents, Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, Ja­maica Tallawahs, St Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots, St Lu­cia Zouks and Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers - will play match­es at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, and at the Bri­an Lara Acad­e­my, Tarou­ba, South Trinidad.

The Gold Com­man­der for the CPL tour­na­ment is Act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er, Floris Hodge-Grif­fith.

So far there are 173 pos­i­tive cas­es in T&T with eight deaths as of yes­ter­day.

PM Row­ley al­so said that breach­ing of biose­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols by play­ers and staff will strict­ly not be tol­er­at­ed.

"Don't play you can come out from that pro­to­col and de­cide to take a drink down the road or what­ev­er, we're not tol­er­at­ing that. We've es­tab­lished very strict pro­to­cols."

The open­ing match will be be­tween the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers and the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my from 10 am fol­lowed by the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons the Tri­dents against the Pa­tri­ots from 5.30 pm.