All restau­rants in Trinidad and To­ba­go will be closed from to­mor­row.

This was one of sev­er­al new re­stric­tions an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley, as he ex­tend­ed the stay at home or­der to April 30th.

“We are to­day, clos­ing all restau­rants un­til April 30th, so what I said about that arrange­ment for col­lect­ing food at restau­rants and so on please dis­re­gard that. We are not per­mit­ting food ser­vices of any kind un­til the 30th of April,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the gov­ern­ment had is­sued re­stric­tions on din­ing-in at restau­rants, al­low­ing for pa­trons to en­joy curb-side pick-up or home de­liv­ery.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so an­nounced that ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, all mem­bers of the pub­lic are to wear masks over their mouths and nos­trils once out­side. He said the gov­ern­ment would work to dis­trib­ute masks to the pub­lic.

He al­so an­nounced ad­just­ed hours for sev­er­al stores.  They are:

*  Hard­ware’s, in­clud­ing elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing stores will be al­lowed to be open from 8 am-Noon (Mon­day to Sat­ur­day)

*  Stores that of­fer re­tail ser­vices such as dis­count stores, su­per­mar­kets, fruit/veg­etable stalls, bak­eries, cor­ner shops that pro­vide food are to be closed to the pub­lic by 6 pm.

*  Whole­sale stores for pro­vi­sion of food/med­i­cine are to be closed by 4 pm.

*  Phar­ma­cies are to be closed to the pub­lic by 8 pm.

“This is at the point at which we could lose con­trol be­cause we do not know how many per­sons or who they are, who might be in that cat­e­go­ry of non-trav­el but we do know that they are out there, ” said the Prime Min­is­ter, con­cern­ing the think­ing that led to these changes.

“We ex­pect that by the 15th of April, it is quite like­ly, cer­tain­ly that we are go­ing to be in a worst sit­u­a­tion than we were when we first start­ed out with ‘stay at home’. And we will take ad­di­tion­al ac­tion to in­ten­si­fy to com­pli­ance with that in­struc­tion, not re­lax it,” he said.

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Sto­ry by PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER