The pub­lic will still be able to go to the shop, gro­cery and drug store from Mon­day. But if you’re not do­ing that and aren’t among cer­tain es­sen­tial ser­vices which con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing, you’ll have to tell po­lice why you’re out­side and could ul­ti­mate­ly face a $50,000 fine and six months’ jail.

"The Min­istry of Health in­forms the pop­u­la­tion that to­day, Fri­day 27th March, de­spite the best ef­forts of the health care pro­fes­sion­als, a sec­ond na­tion­al of T&T who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 has died," the re­lease said.

From mid­night on Sun­day (March 29) to April 15, cit­i­zens who are clas­si­fied as “non-es­sen­tial” will be re­quired to stay at home. Should civil­ians ig­nore the warn­ing, they will feel the full brunt of the law, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, an­nounc­ing deep­er COVID-19 mea­sures.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is main­tain­ing T&T will not open its bor­ders to al­low na­tion­als strand­ed out­side to re­turn home, say­ing they could ex­pose the en­tire coun­try to a big­ger threat of ex­po­sure to COVID-19.

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is al­leg­ing that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is en­gag­ing in “pro­pa­gan­da” and play­ing “nasty” pol­i­tics with peo­ple’s lives.

There are still sev­er­al burn­ing ques­tions that have not been an­swered by Min­istry of Health au­thor­i­ties in the death of 77-year-old Hansel Leon, a US cit­i­zen who suc­cumbed to com­pli­ca­tions from the COVID-19 on Wednes­day close to noon at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal. The one thing that seems cer­tain, how­ev­er, is that the Min­istry’s of Health’s con­tact trac­ing net for per­sons he may have come in­to con­tact with will have to be cast wide.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram is up­set that pa­tient in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to this coun­try's first COVID-19 death, as well as na­tion­als who are on a self-quar­an­tine mon­i­tor­ing list giv­en to the po­lice, emerged on so­cial me­dia.

Cab­i­net has agreed to al­lo­cate an ad­di­tion­al $157 mil­lion to four of the coun­try’s five Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) as they ramp up the fight against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who re­cent­ly re­turned home from abroad and have been told to self-quar­an­tine will now face strong ac­tion if they breach the or­der.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, there are few rev­e­la­tions that will like­ly pan­ic some­one more than find­ing out that a loved one has the virus.

Gov­ern­ment’s res­cue mis­sion to “keep peo­ple alive” amid the COVID-19 threat will be re­in­forced next week with the start of pay­out of In­come Tax re­turns to peo­ple owed $20,000 and less. VAT re­turn pay­ments will al­so be­gin for small and medi­um busi­ness­es owed $250,000 and un­der.

The num­ber of cas­es in­creased by six in the space of one day—go­ing from 51 on Mon­day to 53 by mid­day yes­ter­day and 57 by 4 pm on Tues­day.