Pres­i­dent of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion Robin Narayns­ingh is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide vac­cines for its work­ers as he said they too are es­sen­tial work­ers.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, al­so MP for Lopinot /Bon Air West is promis­ing res­i­dents of the Fiv­er Rivers area that by next year that com­mu­ni­ty will be con­nect­ed to a new waste wa­ter treat­ment plant which is be­ing built in Trinci­ty.

As a teenag­er, my first en­counter with a pa­tient was at a com­mu­ni­ty out­reach med­ical clin­ic, whose blood sug­ar was re­mark­ably el­e­vat­ed and the pa­tient be­came hys­ter­i­cal, re­fus­ing the in­sulin shot. This blood sug­ar read­ing was dam­ag­ing­ly high, plac­ing her at risk of slip­ping in­to a co­ma. But her fear of nee­dles was so de­bil­i­tat­ing, it out­weighed all log­ic and re­quired sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts to bring her to calm.

Glob­al­ly, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has been a roller coast­er of un­cer­tain­ty and dis­tress. Lives and liveli­hoods have been trau­ma­tised. The in­for­ma­tion on the dis­ease, on the vac­cines, on the side ef­fects have even been con­flict­ing at times. It was nec­es­sary that I did my own re­search, fil­tered through the mis­in­for­ma­tion, and con­clud­ed it was nec­es­sary to trust the sci­ence. I be­lieve as a busi­ness en­ti­ty, con­sid­er­ing the na­ture of my busi­ness, it was my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be vac­ci­nat­ed. It is my way of pro­tect­ing my staff, my cus­tomers, and the com­mu­ni­ties I in­ter­act with­in.

There’s no gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy at this time to have a pay cut for MPs. How­ev­er, some on the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion sides have been help­ing con­stituents and will con­tin­ue do­ing so.

The leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum to the Gov­ern­ment to come up with a plan by next week for cit­i­zens to re­turn to work and pro­vide for their fam­i­lies.

Af­ter weeks of urg­ing cit­i­zens to ad­here to the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions and ob­serve the pa­ra­me­ters set out by the State of Emer­gency (SOE) which took ef­fect on May 15, health of­fi­cials have re­port­ed that it is bear­ing fruit as emerg­ing pat­terns in­di­cate there has been a slow­ing in the num­ber of cas­es be­ing record­ed be­tween mid-May to present.

Three weeks af­ter a State of Emer­gency went in­to ef­fect to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus in T&T, a week­end cur­few is set to go in­to ef­fect to­day from 7 pm to 5 am for the month of June.

There is good news ahead for T&T in terms of vac­cine ac­qui­si­tion as the next three months should see sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand dos­es ar­riv­ing in the coun­try, lead­ing to an ac­cel­er­at­ed vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

Un­em­ploy­ment, hunger and pover­ty have been grip­ping the pop­u­la­tion of T&T with the clo­sure of busi­ness­es due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

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

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has banned all pre­pared and pre-pack­aged foods for sale and hard­ware are to be closed for the next week.