Camille McEach­nie

Heads of To­ba­go’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try say they sup­port the roll­back re­stric­tions im­ple­ment­ed by the Min­istry of Health (MOH) to ad­dress the re­cent in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es, not­ing it’s “un­for­tu­nate” every­one had not fol­lowed COVID pro­to­cols, lead­ing to in­creased cas­es.

Chris James, Kaye Trot­man, and Nicholas Hard­wicke said the new re­stric­tions may not have fur­ther weak­ened To­ba­go’s econ­o­my if the usu­al fi­nan­cial cush­ion from the East­er va­ca­tion had ma­te­ri­alised.

They said oc­cu­pan­cy rates fell be­low the ex­pect­ed over 90 per cent, and re­stric­tions on restau­rants’ sale of al­co­hol and seat­ing ca­pac­i­ty, pre­vent­ed the food and bev­er­age sec­tor from ac­cess­ing the in­creased vis­i­tors’ ar­rivals ben­e­fits.

At the MoH me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh an­nounced beach­es would close again ex­cept for tur­tle con­ser­va­tion­ists, restau­rants re­vert to curb­side pick­up, and pub­lic gath­er­ings re­duced from 10 to five, for the next three weeks.

Re­act­ing to the the an­nounce­ment, James, who is pres­i­dent of To­ba­go’s Bed and Break­fast, Self-Cater­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Unique Ac­com­mo­da­tion and Trot­man, pres­i­dent of the Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, said the Gov­ern­ment must save cit­i­zens’ lives re­gard­less of the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences.

James said the oc­cu­pan­cy rate for the four-day East­er week­end was 79.1 per cent.

Go­ing for­ward, the fig­ures show that we are look­ing at 18 per cent for the re­main­der of April. We do not have fig­ures for fur­ther ahead than that,” James told Guardian Me­dia.

Trot­man said the bed and break­fast sec­tor re­port­ed less than 60 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy rate for East­er–some mem­bers had no guests while oth­ers were ful­ly booked.

Restau­ra­teur Hard­wicke said he did well for the East­er sea­son

“Un­der the lim­its of not be­ing able to sell al­co­hol and with on­ly 50 per cent seat­ing ca­pac­i­ty at the restau­rant,” he said

Hard­wicke, who owns Sea­horse Inn Restau­rant and Bar, said hav­ing to re­vert to curb­side pick­up is “an ex­er­cise in a slow death.”

He says he hoped the Gov­ern­ment is us­ing sci­en­tif­ic da­ta to rein­tro­duce the roll­back of the mea­sures.

All the hos­pi­tal­i­ty vet­er­ans say they look for­ward to this coun­try’s vac­ci­na­tion roll­out plan and res­i­dents do­ing their part to al­low the econ­o­my to re­open.

Ac­cord­ing to To­ba­go’s Health Di­vi­sion, as of yes­ter­day, there are 23 ac­tive COVID cas­es on the is­land– two new cas­es in the last 24 hours. Since last year when test­ing be­gan in To­ba­go, there have been 185 pos­i­tive cas­es and two per­sons have died.