COVID-19: Trinidad & Tobago declares State of Emergency

The Trinidad & Tobago government has declared a State of Emergency and an 8-hour curfew as a “scared population” looked to the authorities to implement new measures to deal with a rising number of deaths and infections from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

According to Prime Minister Keith Rowley, speaking at the weekly news conference of the Ministry of Health, “the state of emergency (SOE) will remain in place for 90 days”.

“If you don’t have to be out for exempted reasons please stay home,” Rowley said, as the country reported 5,558 active cases of the virus and 276 deaths.

Rowley told reporters that it has now dawned on the population that the virus should be taken very seriously, saying he also come to the realization that he is seeing a “population that is scared”.

“I am sorry that it has come to coffins and faces of dead people for us to realize that we are in and have always been in a very difficult place. Before we were only dealing with numbers, but I think the population is at the stage now where the numbers are being seen to be of people even known to you.”

The prime minister said that while it is not feasible to shut down a country, “much as we would like everybody to be home”, the authorities are allowing for workers in essential services to function so as to prevent the rest of the population from engaging in buying things in excess thereby causing a panic. Rowley said places like gas stations, pharmacies, supermarkets, would be allowed to operate within the nine-hour 12 hour period,” but the other areas we will shut down completely”.

Rowley also sought to dismiss reports that Trinidad & Tobago was not able to acquire vaccines to deal with the pandemic, insisting that the situation is a worldwide issue and that even some Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries had gone outside the World Health Organization (WHO) approved vaccines to purchase the product. He insisted that his administration would continue to be guided by the World Health Organization (WHO) and appealed to the population to get vaccinated and help the country achieve herd immunity.

Earlier, Epidemiologist, Avery Hinds told reporters that the number of COVID-19 cases were continuing to show “an upward trend” and that health authorities were worried about that situation and its effect on the parallel health care system. Principal Medical Officer at the Ministry of Health, Maryam Abdool-Richards, said that hospitals across the country were now having an average of 380 admissions over the last seven days. – (CMC)