(Jour­nal­ist Ira Math­ur has tak­en the first shot from the first roll­out of the As­traZeneca vac­cine.)

The Gov­ern­ment will ex­tend the cur­few to the day­time pe­ri­od on the two pub­lic hol­i­days sched­uled this week–In­di­an Ar­rival Day on Mon­day and Cor­pus Christi on Thurs­day–to lim­it move­ment dur­ing the day.

With de­mand for so­cial work­ers and coun­selling ser­vices in schools and through­out the pub­lic sys­tem in­creas­ing as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic rages, the chron­ic short­age of qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als has be­come glar­ing.

Chair­man of the In­ter-Re­ligous Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) Rev­erend Dr Knol­ly Clarke yes­ter­day urged cit­i­zens to sup­port to­day’s Na­tion­al Day of Prayeras he says the coun­try is fac­ing dark times.

The Ma­yaro con­stituen­cy has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic with more than 400 con­stituents quar­an­tined and po­lice mon­i­tor­ing con­strained as well by quar­an­tine or­ders.

This is the last line of de­fence by the Gov­ern­ment as it at­tempts to sti­fle the surg­ing COVID-19 num­bers and deaths in the hope it will give the over­bur­dened health care sys­tem some much-need­ed breath­ing room.

At­tor­ney Om Lal­la be­lieves that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s vi­brant democ­ra­cy will pre­vent any abuse of pow­er un­der the new State of Emer­gency that has just come in­to ef­fect.

And al­though the re­search done by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi is still in­con­clu­sive, promi­nent uro­log­i­cal sur­geon Dr Lall Sawh says it should be enough to ter­ri­fy men in­to tak­ing bet­ter pre­cau­tions against COVID-19.

The High Com­mis­sion­er is no stranger to han­dling crises dur­ing diplo­ma­cy. In 2015 as Deputy High Com­mis­sion­er, she over­saw the evac­u­a­tion of the Yemen British Em­bassy dur­ing the con­flict there no doubt smoothed by her ex­pe­ri­ence as In­ter­na­tion­al Pol­i­cy Ad­vis­er for the UK's Na­tion­al Crime Agency.

Busi­ness lead­ers are ex­press­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with the State of Emer­gency an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley but say it was a bit late in com­ing.

Cit­i­zens heed­ed the call of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day to re­frain from pan­ic buy­ing or hoard­ing gro­ceries, mak­ing a run for gaso­line or drugs and med­i­cine af­ter he an­nounced that a State of Emer­gency will be in ef­fect from mid­night Sat­ur­day.

As T&T record­ed 520 COVID-19 in­fec­tions and 11 more deaths on Sat­ur­day, peo­ple across south Trinidad wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment's im­po­si­tion of a State of Emer­gency.