RISHARD KHAN
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The coun­try's mask man­date will, for the most part, end over the week­end.  How­ev­er, busi­ness­es can man­date their cus­tomers to wear masks while on their premis­es if they so wish. This, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh MP, dur­ing the min­istry’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said busi­ness­es would be well with­in their rights to cre­ate the pol­i­cy.

"A busi­ness place can de­ter­mine who comes in. You would see signs say­ing no sleeve­less, no hats, no bare­foot, no short pants—and this has been cleared by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that any busi­ness place has the au­thor­i­ty to de­ter­mine whether some­one comes in­to their es­tab­lish­ment with a mask or with­out a mask," he said.

He said this free­dom is not lim­it­ed to pri­vate busi­ness­es but al­so state en­ti­ties such as pub­lic trans­port ser­vices.

The Min­istry of Health pre­sent­ed its rec­om­men­da­tions for set­tings where masks should be worn and who should main­tain the mask-wear­ing. The guide­lines for the de­ci­sion, which is now up to in­di­vid­ual choice, ad­vise peo­ple to weigh their risks based on the coun­try's out­break, their in­di­vid­ual risk fac­tors such as co­mor­bidi­ties, and the set­ting they will be in.

The Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr Roshan Paras­ram, re­mind­ed the pop­u­la­tion that while there is no longer the re­quire­ment for masks to be worn out­side of health­care set­tings, it does not mean they should be ditched al­to­geth­er.

"Af­ter two years, per­sons would have learnt how to man­age COVID-19 and how to live with COVID-19, and I don't ex­pect the day af­ter the man­date comes out that every­one will take off their mask at the same time," he said.

The re­quire­ment for masks to be worn in all pub­lic set­tings will be re­moved in favour of a vol­un­tary sys­tem and will be ef­fec­tive from Ju­ly 17.