Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

For just about two weeks, Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials have been warn­ing cit­i­zens that COVID-19 cas­es are in­creas­ing again and on Wednes­day, the coun­try con­firmed its largest num­ber of cas­es for the year.

With this in mind, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith is urg­ing both the Chris­t­ian and the Shouter Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ties to ad­here to COVID-19 guide­lines this com­ing Holy Week.

In light of the ris­ing COVID cas­es, Grif­fith yes­ter­day said he will no longer be en­ter­tain­ing any re­quests by cit­i­zens seek­ing to hold vig­ils and march­es.

In a re­lease, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice said Grif­fith has in­stead asked that or­gan­is­ers be more in­no­v­a­tive and have vir­tu­al events in­stead of gath­er­ing in their hun­dreds. This, the re­lease said, in­cludes the Sta­tions of the Cross pro­ces­sions dur­ing Holy Week ac­tiv­i­ties which start with Palm Sun­day fes­tiv­i­ties over the week­end.

“This month marked one year since the virus has been with us. So far, 141 per­sons have died as a re­sult of the virus and thou­sands were af­fect­ed. The bor­ders have been closed and there are re­stric­tions in place to pro­tect the coun­try,” Grif­fith was quot­ed as say­ing.

“We have no­ticed over the past year, some events with large gath­er­ings caused a spike in cas­es. The TTPS has been on the front­line en­sur­ing that peo­ple ob­serve the re­stric­tions and ad­here to the pro­to­cols. I know these up­com­ing events al­ways at­tract­ed thou­sands of peo­ple, but this time we have to be care­ful. I am ask­ing the or­gan­is­ers of these events to en­sure that their fol­low­ers do the right thing.”

The re­lease not­ed that Grif­fith said over the past weeks he had been very ac­com­mo­dat­ing to per­sons and groups who re­quest­ed per­mis­sion to hold vig­ils, protests, meet­ings and march­es. It said the com­mis­sion­er agreed to grant per­mis­sion across the board be­cause of the is­sues high­light­ed across the coun­try and, more par­tic­u­lar­ly, in light of the re­cent killings of sev­er­al women.

But it said fol­low­ing the grant­i­ng of these re­quests, some of them con­tra­vened the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Reg­u­la­tions, Sec­tion 3 (1), which states that a per­son shall not, with­out rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, be found at any pub­lic place where the num­ber of per­sons gath­ered, at any time, ex­ceeds ten.

It said Grif­fith had no­ticed that re­cent gath­er­ings fea­tured hun­dreds of per­sons al­though the or­gan­is­ers of the events tried their very best to con­trol the crowds which had gath­ered. As a re­sult, he said he will not be en­ter­tain­ing any re­quests at this time for vig­ils and march­es.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the coun­cil of el­ders of Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tists Arch­bish­op Bar­bara Grey-Burke ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over Grif­fith’s an­nounce­ment and the rise in cas­es.

“Is Bap­tist to cel­e­brate now nuh, so COVID on the rise? All the time they giv­ing per­mis­sion for all these march­es all over the place. COVID didn’t stop­ping no­body,” Grey-Burke said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

“All of a sud­den spike! COVID! Spike! What was go­ing on with all those march­es when the com­mis­sion­er was giv­ing per­mis­sion?”

De­spite this, she said Bap­tists will be obey­ing what­ev­er reg­u­la­tions are in place come Tues­day when they cel­e­brate the Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist hol­i­day.

“Even though they against us we will serve God, be­cause we ac­cus­tomed with po­lice run­ning us, we ac­cus­tomed with po­lice jail­ing we el­ders, we ac­cus­tomed with all of that but we not go­ing to break the law,” Grey-Burke said, al­lud­ing to the tur­bu­lent his­to­ry be­tween those of the faith and the po­lice dur­ing colo­nial rule.

She said there will be no cel­e­bra­tions this year de­spite their re­turn to phys­i­cal ser­vice. In­stead, she said there will be a thanks­giv­ing ser­vice and a cel­e­bra­tion will be held when the COVID-19 out­break lets up enough and it is safe to do so.

On Mon­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the coun­try ap­pears to be on the verge of a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es. It came af­ter an up­surge in cas­es record­ed in coun­ty Ca­roni over the past two weeks, lead­ing to an 89 per cent in­crease in cas­es.

De­spite the con­cern over the in­creas­es, Paras­ram not­ed it was still too ear­ly and un­clear whether the coun­try is en­ter­ing a third phase of in­fec­tion.

The rise in cas­es has al­so prompt­ed Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to call a meet­ing with the Min­istry of Health to dis­cuss the April 12 re­sump­tion of in-per­son class­es for Stan­dard 5 stu­dents on April 12.

“We are meet­ing to weigh the cir­cum­stances, eval­u­ate the last term and make a rec­om­men­da­tion for the re­turn of Stan­dard 5 to phys­i­cal class­es,” Gads­by-Dol­ly told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.