RHON­DOR DOWLAT

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ for­mer MP and min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to lift all COVID-19 emer­gency pub­lic health de­c­la­ra­tions.

This fol­lows the move by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion to de­clare an end to the COVID pan­dem­ic as a ‘glob­al pub­lic health emer­gency of in­ter­na­tion­al con­cern’ on Fri­day.

It means that three years af­ter the COVID-19 virus un­leashed an un­prece­dent­ed med­ical and eco­nom­ic cri­sis of glob­al pro­por­tions, the world can now look for­ward to some re­turn to pre-pan­dem­ic norms.

Gopeesingh, in the wake of this sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment, is ad­vis­ing the Gov­ern­ment and Min­istry of Health to im­me­di­ate­ly lift the emer­gency pub­lic health de­c­la­ra­tion that has been in place in T&T since 2020.

“This, in spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence, but not lim­it­ed to, the Pub­lic Health Nov­el Coro­n­avirus Reg­u­la­tions 2022, which man­dates the wear­ing of face­masks in all health in­sti­tu­tions, pri­vate and pub­lic, as well as where gen­er­al places of busi­ness­es may deem nec­es­sary,” Gopeesingh said.

Ac­cord­ing to Le­gal No­tice No 189, Sep­tem­ber 19, 2022, a per­son can be fined a sum of $5,000, or face three days in jail, for fail­ure to wear a face mask in the spec­i­fied ar­eas.

“This is now un­nec­es­sary, and even harsh, giv­en the WHO’s lat­est de­c­la­ra­tion. No­tably, the Unit­ed States is set to sim­i­lar­ly lift its own na­tion­al emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tion (re Covid-19) on May 11, 2023,” Gopeesingh ex­plained.

“It is no­table that the WHO de­clared the pan­dem­ic a pub­lic health emer­gency of in­ter­na­tion­al con­cern on Jan­u­ary 30, 2020, the very same day I first raised this mat­ter in the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment for ur­gent pub­lic de­bate as then Ca­roni East MP. It was mem­o­rably re­ject­ed, deny­ing the en­tire cit­i­zen­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go the right to learn some de­gree of aware­ness of the sig­nif­i­cant threat the then nascent COVID-19 dis­ease would have posed to their lives and our gen­er­al so­ci­ety as a na­tion,” he added.

Gopeesingh al­so not­ed that UNC’s ef­forts to raise the mat­ter in 2020 four more times were al­so de­nied, “To­day, our coun­try is still reel­ing from the tru­ly dev­as­tat­ing eco­nom­ic, so­cial, and med­ical con­se­quences of the pan­dem­ic. Our econ­o­my is strug­gling to re­cov­er, our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has been set back decades, caus­ing a gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren to fall be­hind, and most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, over 4,700 peo­ple have trag­i­cal­ly lost their lives in Trinidad and To­ba­go. COVID-19 has, in fact, claimed 6.9 mil­lion lives glob­al­ly, and one mil­lion in the USA.”

He said, “Even as we move to em­brace liv­ing in a world de­void of the dev­as­tat­ing COVID-19 re­stric­tions on our ba­sic free­doms,” we are still await­ing the WHO’s rec­om­men­da­tions, cur­rent­ly be­ing de­vel­oped, as to how coun­tries should con­tin­ue to man­age the on­go­ing COVID-19 threats.

We must re­main crit­i­cal­ly aware that this dis­ease is still a sig­nif­i­cant health threat, Gopeesingh said, as “mil­lions of peo­ple glob­al­ly and thou­sands na­tion­al­ly are now liv­ing with post-COVID-19 long-term de­bil­i­tat­ing med­ical prob­lems. These in­clude men­tal health, car­diac, neu­ro­log­ic, and dai­ly func­tion­al dis­abil­i­ties is­sues.”

In the wake of this, he said, the Gov­ern­ment and Min­istry of Health must now in­form the pop­u­la­tion with ur­gency what med­ical man­age­ment poli­cies and pro­grammes they have im­ple­ment­ed, or plan to im­ple­ment, to deal with this threat. “They must re­port to the na­tion where and how our cit­i­zens who are af­fect­ed with long-term COVID-19, and in­deed, those who will con­tract COVID-19, can re­ceive crit­i­cal health care and sup­port to al­le­vi­ate their con­tin­ued med­ical threat and suf­fer­ing,” he added.