Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day warned against breach­ing COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions by us­ing vir­tu­al Car­ni­val fetes as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for mass gath­er­ings.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, he point­ed out that ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 12, 2020, pub­lic gath­er­ings of up to ten per­sons are al­lowed. How­ev­er, with an “up­surge of vir­tu­al Car­ni­val fetes, which are be­ing planned to turn in­to mass gath­er­ings by a few”, the po­lice will in­ter­vene if the reg­u­la­tions are breached, Grif­fith warned.

“These vir­tu­al Car­ni­val events, if not con­trolled, would yet again be a cause for the virus to spread as some who are ei­ther ir­re­spon­si­ble, or see an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a prof­it, are plan­ning to get un­to the site of these vir­tu­al events and set up large screens with pow­er­ful sound sys­tems, even in their own back yards, then to have cov­er charges, or bring a bot­tle etc, and to have oth­ers view the event, and be en­ter­tained at such venues, hence turn­ing it in­to a Car­ni­val fete.

The Com­mis­sion­er added: “This is where the TTPS would yet again in­ter­vene, not to be the Grim Reaper of Car­ni­val, but mere­ly to do our job to en­sure that the reg­u­la­tions are not breached and that per­sons act re­spon­si­bly.”

Grif­fith said while he un­der­stands the ra­tio­nale of vir­tu­al Car­ni­val events “pri­mar­i­ly as an av­enue to pro­vide funds for cer­tain in­sti­tu­tions to off­set an­nu­al ex­pens­es, in­clu­sive of schools” there are dan­gers with such planned events.

He al­so warned against us­ing feeds from vir­tu­al events to in­vite oth­ers to pri­vate premis­es to view and par­tic­i­pate.

“Such ac­tions would be seen as breach­es of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Reg­u­la­tions, as you would be turn­ing your pri­vate premis­es in­to a pub­lic place and the po­lice would act ac­cord­ing­ly,” he said.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith al­so ad­dressed re­cent con­cerns about wed­dings.

“There is a very spe­cif­ic and sci­en­tif­ic rea­son why the Or­di­nance made al­lowances for wed­dings, but with very clear guid­ance as to the re­quire­ments. One can­not com­pare a wed­ding with hun­dreds of guests, to a wed­ding with ten or twen­ty guests,” he said.

“We have ab­solute­ly no is­sue with the host­ing of the small­er wed­dings, as we have seen an up­surge in this prac­tice. How­ev­er, the high­er the num­bers, the high­er the risk. And I want to re­mind the pop­u­la­tion, that we will en­force the laws, even if it means pro­tect­ing you from your­self.”

He added: “We are not alone in the ever-evolv­ing fight to man­age be­hav­iours to de­crease the spread. How­ev­er, what makes it more chal­leng­ing is the con­tin­ued push back, in­clud­ing the con­stant ques­tion­ing of the en­force­ment of the Quar­an­tine Act.

“These laws have been draft­ed and are be­ing en­forced, not to frus­trate any­one, but to save lives. Our role is to en­force the law—it’s that sim­ple.”