It’s an in­dus­try that em­ploys thou­sands of peo­ple and now with the threat of COVID- 19, cos­me­tol­o­gists and hair­dressers across the coun­try are feel­ing the brunt.

While su­per­mar­kets, phar­ma­cies and agri­cul­tur­al cen­tres ex­pe­ri­ence soar­ing sales, beau­ty par­lours and hair­dress­ing sa­lons have seen a dras­tic de­cline in the num­ber of clients.

At Hair by Jow­elle Sa­lon in San Fer­nan­do, it was an un­usu­al­ly slow day.

De Souza said, “Sat­ur­day was the worst I’ve seen in years. Its the first time since 1990 that I saw busi­ness this slow with very few clients. Peo­ple are not go­ing any­where, they are choos­ing to stay at home.”

She said the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to with­hold the gen­er­al ad­dress­es of those test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19, was cre­at­ing more pan­ic among the cit­i­zen­ry.

“If we do not know where these pa­tients are from, how can we do our own con­tact trac­ing?” she asked. She ex­plained that de­spite the small num­ber of clients she was go­ing to re­main open.

“We will re­main open for longer hours and every day from Sun­day to Sun­day to sat­is­fy our clients. Of course, we will take every pre­cau­tion to en­sure the safe­ty of our staff and clients,” she added. Asked whether she planned to screen clients, De Souza said no.

She ex­plained that this would be dis­cour­te­ous to clients.

How­ev­er, at the Touch of Bliss Day Spa in Dun­can Vil­lage, own­er Vee­tra Ram­sumair-Jagdeo said she has start­ed screen­ing clients. She said any­one with a trav­el his­to­ry is asked to take a 14-day self-quar­an­tine be­fore com­ing to the sa­lon.

She said ap­point­ments have been few­er.

“We ster­ilise every­thing af­ter a client has fin­ished. We have been do­ing this even be­fore COVID-19 but now we are even more vig­i­lant. We use gloves for mas­sages, pedi­cures and man­i­cures. We use face masks when do­ing fa­cials. We ster­ilise, sani­tise and clean every­thing con­stant­ly,” she added.

She said al­though the num­ber of clients had de­creased she had not made any de­ci­sion to cut staff.

Hair­dress­er Desmond Lar­ry Lalchan says de­spite the fears sur­round­ing the pan­dem­ic, he was tak­ing all pre­cau­tions.

“Every time I han­dle mon­ey I wash my hands and that is some­thing I can­not stress enough to every­one. We need to take vi­t­a­mins and boost our im­mune sys­tem. I have sani­tis­er at my desk and I make sure to wash my hands all the time,” he added.

He said even though the beau­ty in­dus­try had tak­en a hit be­cause of COVID-19, he was hop­ing that the T&T in­dus­try would sus­tain it­self de­spite the per­il.