This is the plea and plight of the Surf­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT) and oth­er ath­letes. Surf­ing re­quires wave con­di­tions that in most cas­es would not be con­sid­ered safe for the gen­er­al pub­lic, and usu­al­ly takes place at un­shel­tered se­clud­ed beach ar­eas that are not fre­quent­ed by your av­er­age “beach­go­er”. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Sports, SATT Pres­i­dent Jean-Paul Ros­tant said that I can on­ly com­ment on the Sport of Surf­ing in par­tic­u­lar and high­light the facts that by its very na­ture, the sport of surf­ing en­cour­ages so­cial dis­tanc­ing. Ath­letes close to one an­oth­er ac­tu­al­ly in­tro­duce un­nec­es­sary risks like col­li­sion and in­juries and so the dis­tance be­tween surfers is some­what of a pre­req­ui­site. Surf­ing al­so re­quires wave con­di­tions that in most cas­es would not be con­sid­ered safe for the gen­er­al pub­lic and surfers pre­fer un­shel­tered se­clud­ed beach ar­eas that are not fre­quent­ed by mem­bers of the pub­lic.” Ros­tant went on­to say Mem­bers of the surf­ing and wa­ter sports com­mu­ni­ty have start­ed rais­ing aware­ness of the low risk as­so­ci­at­ed with these ac­tiv­i­ties via so­cial me­dia and have start­ed us­ing the hash­tag #openthe­beach­es to gath­er sup­port for the cause. The on­line pe­ti­tion, start­ed by the past Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Kei­th Lewis, who has gar­nered over 1,360 sig­na­tures so far on the web­site chang.org.

The pe­ti­tion calls for a re­spon­si­ble ac­tiv­i­ty to al­low the ac­cess of the ocean to surf, or swim/train, or snorkel and free-dive, kayak, stand-up-pad­dle, and sim­i­lar and re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties that pose min­i­mal to no pos­si­ble trans­mis­sion of COVID-19. SATT al­so point­ed out that

oth­er coun­tries such as Bar­ba­dos, the USA (Cal­i­for­nia and Hawaii), Aus­tralia, In­done­sia (Bali) and oth­ers have al­lowed peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in these ac­tiv­i­ties.

On Au­gust 15, the Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the sec­ond roll­back of mea­sures to man­age the com­mu­ni­ty spread of COVID-19. The main fo­cus was on get­ting peo­ple to un­der­stand what was need­ed for min­i­miz­ing the risk of virus trans­mis­sion. This in­clud­ed mask-wear­ing and so­cial-dis­tanc­ing re­quire­ments with the leg­is­la­tion to al­low for sweep­ing and broad en­force­ment. Pub­lic-gath­er­ings were high­light­ed as high-risk, and so any­thing that could 'pull a crowd', from places of wor­ship, con­tact sports and sports-crowds, to lim­ing es­tab­lish­ments and any kind of gath­er­ing to cel­e­brate (par­ties) or com­mis­er­ate (fu­ner­als), were swept up in the gov­ern­ment's guid­ance that non-es­sen­tial ac­tiv­i­ties were too dan­ger­ous to be al­lowed. Beach­es, Rivers, Streams, Ponds were closed.

Ros­tant an avid wa­ter­man re­quest­ed that the Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er a re­vi­sion to the ex­ist­ing Pub­lic Health reg­u­la­tions al­low­ing beach ac­cess for all wa­ter­sport en­thu­si­asts dur­ing the hours of 6-9 am Dai­ly. This ac­cess would on­ly be al­lowed con­sid­er­ing cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions ie. pro­hi­bi­tion of al­co­hol and any an­cil­lary de­vices that would pro­mote un­safe gath­er­ings at the beach­es dur­ing these hours eg cool­ers, um­brel­las, chairs etc. Ros­tant men­tioned that the as­so­ci­a­tion un­der­stands that Covid-19 is not go­ing any­where soon and they would just like to give their in­put as stake­hold­ers dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.

Mean­while, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) rec­om­mends that beach­es and parks be uti­lized to im­prove health and well­ness to re­duce COVID-19 trans­mis­sion and im­prove sur­vival.

The WHO sci­en­tif­ic risk as­sess­ment tool cal­cu­lates the fol­low­ing as ‘Very Low’ risk for trans­mit­ting Covid19: Aqua ther­a­py, Aqua jog­ging/ex­er­cis­es-train­ing, Wind­surf­ing, Surf­ing, Row­ing, in­di­vid­ual swim­ming, snorkelling, ca­noe­ing, free-dive, kayak, Stand-Up-Pad­dle, kite surf­ing, dingy sail­ing, sail­ing, beach jog­ging, beach gym­nas­tics and sim­i­lar non-con­tact, so­cial dis­tanc­ing, per­son­al/in­di­vid­ual low im­pact ac­tiv­i­ties that oc­cur in the sun­shine and open air.

These forms of ex­er­cis­es are en­cour­aged by the WHO and the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty be­cause many per­sons are co­mor­bidi­ties on­ly al­low them to ex­er­cise in a low im­pact aquat­ic medi­um and they help de­vel­op the car­diores­pi­ra­to­ry, Im­mune sys­tems, syn­the­size vi­t­a­min D and good health, which are the on­ly proven pro­tec­tion against the covid19.

These ac­tiv­i­ties have al­lowed many coun­tries to con­trol suc­cess­ful­ly over­come and con­trol the covid19 spread.

They have a low­er WHO risk as­sess­ment score than all the oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties be­ing per­mit­ted in Trinidad and To­ba­go. (Golf, Ten­nis, al­co­hol con­sump­tion…)

We pro­pose fol­low­ing be im­ple­ment­ed ur­gent­ly to avoid the wors­en­ing health/ co­mor­bidi­ties of the most vul­ner­a­ble be­ing caused by the cur­rent re­stric­tions:

*Ac­cess to the beach­es will be grant­ed to mem­bers of the pub­lic be­tween the hours of 6:00 AM-6:00 PM Dai­ly to per­sons en­gaged in Health and well­ness ac­tiv­i­ties.

*While en­gag­ing in ex­er­cise and well­ness ac­tiv­i­ties on the beach, mem­bers of the pub­lic must fol­low so­cial dis­tanc­ing guide­lines as out­lined by the Min­istry of Health (MOH) and the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO).•

*Al­co­hol con­sump­tion, smok­ing, pic­nick­ing, mu­sic, fetes, gath­er­ing. lim­ing and con­tact sports/ ac­tiv­i­ties on beach­es be strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed.

*Swim­ming lessons, Phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er school ac­tiv­i­ties are en­cour­aged at the beach­es and parks to re­duce school trans­mis­sion of covid19.