The bor­ders of T&T are set to re­open on Ju­ly 17. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was the bear­er of that good news on Sat­ur­day at the COVID-19 up­date at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. Row­ley said that the bor­ders would be open to both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed cit­i­zens. The coun­try would al­so al­low en­try to vac­ci­nat­ed non-na­tion­als, but un­vac­ci­nat­ed non-na­tion­als are not go­ing to be al­lowed in the coun­try at this time.

The COVID-19 num­bers are be­gin­ning to dip, but the coun­try is still in a "del­i­cate equi­lib­ri­um".

It has been a year since COVID-19 snatched pub­lic free­dom caus­ing in­creased anx­i­ety, job loss, food short­ages and chaos in the health care sys­tem.

It is Thurs­day morn­ing–May 27–and I am COVID-19 pos­i­tive, hooked up to an oxy­gen tank and ly­ing on a bed in the tent at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope, des­per­ate­ly hop­ing to live but prepar­ing to die at age 53. I am get­ting worst based on my oxy­gen lev­els, my breath­ing is laboured, I have a high fever, and I am feel­ing ex­treme­ly ex­haust­ed, but Dr Surats­ingh, God bless him, kept me as com­fort­able as he could. I could hear him telling an­oth­er doc­tor how con­cerned he was about my wors­en­ing con­di­tion and that they will need to trans­fer me to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal. Hear­ing this I be­came very de­pressed and de­ject­ed, I sort of gave up hope and start­ed mak­ing peace with God be­cause I re­al­ly thought by Thurs­day night in­to Fri­day I would have passed away. I was at death's door. It was my third day at the hos­pi­tal. I was brought to the fa­cil­i­ty by an am­bu­lance on Mon­day, May 24 paral­ysed with fear. Thank the Lord I had tak­en the As­traZeneca vac­cine four weeks ear­li­er. But, had I not tak­en my first jab of the vac­cine, I was told, I would have more than like­ly be dead.

Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards says in the past sev­er­al weeks, there has been a slow but steady plateau­ing of COVID-19 cas­es and hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions.

Af­ter a dis­as­trous at­tempt at a first-come, first-serve vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme for el­der­ly peo­ple last week, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has an­nounced a new vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

Af­ter hav­ing their sec­tor shut down for more than 15 months, artistes will now be al­lowed to trav­el abroad to work and re­turn home with­out the in­def­i­nite wait­ing pe­ri­od for an ex­emp­tion.

The Health Min­istry has aban­doned ap­prox­i­mate­ly 900 COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients who are cur­rent­ly at home. As a re­sult, they are rapid­ly in­fect­ing their fam­i­ly mem­bers, caus­ing an in­crease in in­fec­tions and deaths among the pop­u­la­tion. For­mer health min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh made this claim as he called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to im­me­di­ate­ly fire Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh over the “lat­est de­ba­cle sur­round­ing this week’s failed, chaot­ic and po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly COVID-19 vac­cine roll­out.”

The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) be­gan vac­ci­na­tions at its newest site on Sat­ur­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has tak­en full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the fail­ure of the Min­istry of Health’s mass vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme this week and he has un­re­served­ly apol­o­gised for the fi­as­co.

Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has crit­i­cised the Min­istry of Health for a lack of prop­er plan­ning in the roll­out of its na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

Law en­force­ment agen­cies in T&T have been grap­pling with the ef­fects of the COVID-19 virus as they step out on the front­line to main­tain law and or­der and safe­ty.