A de­ci­sion on whether Trinidad and To­ba­go's 2021 Car­ni­val will be can­celled due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic should be made in the next 90 days, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters says.

"We have at least 90 days. I think we can still watch it be­fore we can make a call one way or the oth­er. But the Min­is­ter said that we are look­ing at it and it is flu­id," Pe­ters told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day.

Pe­ters said the coun­try was lucky the fes­ti­val is not card­ed un­til Feb­ru­ary 2021.

“We are lucky so far that we have three months ahead of us - by then we would have to say whether it is take off, or ground­ed,” Pe­ters said.

He point­ed out that T&T Car­ni­val is a world event and an in­tel­li­gent de­ci­sion must be made on whether the fes­ti­val is held or not giv­en the health and safe­ty is­sues with the spread of the virus.

“We have to look at the world, be­tween now and next 90 days they could find a cure, they could erad­i­cate it - a lot of things could hap­pen dur­ing the course of that time,” he said.

He said that the go-ahead for Car­ni­val pro­ceed­ings would not nec­es­sar­i­ly be de­pen­dent on a vac­cine but on how rapid­ly the cas­es of the virus sub­side, how well na­tion­als cope with it and how well the world is cop­ing with it.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Pe­ters said the world’s out­look would al­so be con­sid­ered. When asked if the big Car­ni­val bands would be able to sur­vive on ex­port­ing their prod­uct to oth­er Car­ni­vals, Pe­ters ex­plained that too would not be pos­si­ble.

He said: “No they can’t be­cause let me tell you, we are the on­ly coun­try so far that hasn’t can­celled Car­ni­val 2020 you know. So the big bands have nowhere to go re­al­ly.”

Ac­cord­ing to Pe­ters, oth­er coun­tries have al­ready can­celled Car­ni­val 2020 of­fer­ings.

He em­pha­sised: “Ja­maica is can­celled, Cana­da is can­celled, Labour Day is can­celled, Not­ting Hill is can­celled, An­tigua is can­celled, Bar­ba­dos Crop Over is can­celled - every­where is can­celled.”

Nonethe­less, Pe­ters said this would not stop the plan­ning for 2021. He said the NCC has to keep mon­i­tor­ing, plan­ning and hav­ing dis­cus­sions be­cause the sit­u­a­tion is still mu­tat­ing. He said that it would be bet­ter if the plans for 2021 have to be shelved rather than hav­ing no plan to reg­u­late its ac­tiv­i­ties if it is giv­en the all-clear to pro­ceed.

The NCC boss warned, how­ev­er, that if the fes­ti­val is even­tu­al­ly can­celled the coun­try would lose be­tween $1.5 and $1.7 bil­lion in rev­enue.

He said if Car­ni­val 2021 is even­tu­al­ly sanc­tioned, it would al­low the coun­try to have a Car­ni­val of a dif­fer­ent kind.

“If the world is not able to come to us, then we can a retro Car­ni­val,” he said.

Such a Car­ni­val would be one where every­thing is cre­at­ed lo­cal­ly, where there “are all the cos­tumes of yes­ter­year and a gen­er­a­tion now can see what Car­ni­val re­al­ly used to be.”

But Pe­ters said no mat­ter what the out­come is, he be­lieves COVID-19 will af­fect Car­ni­val 2021 and fu­ture events se­vere­ly. He not­ed, though, that the on­ly con­cern right now is the preser­va­tion of life.