On day two of this coun­try’s lift­ing of its mask man­date, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ad­vised against it.

“We are now un­der cau­tion from the WHO that we should re­main masked,” he said.

But even though this is the agency that has guid­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go through the pan­dem­ic, Dr Row­ley, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre on Mon­day said the re­cent mea­sure will re­main for now.

“We will ob­serve our cir­cum­stances and the be­hav­iour of the virus and if as per our pub­lic health analy­sis of our sit­u­a­tion and the po­ten­tial of the virus that the wear­ing of the mask as a com­pul­so­ry re­sponse is re­quired in the near fu­ture the gov­ern­ment will not hes­i­tate to re­turn to the manda­to­ry re­quire­ment for mask­ing,” he ex­plained.

Dr Row­ley said the spread of COVID-19 is still the as­sign­ment that Gov­ern­ment and health of­fi­cials are aim­ing to pre­vent. On Ju­ly 8, the high­ly-trans­mis­si­ble BA.5 vari­ant was con­firmed as present in T&T.

It’s why there were mixed views on the end of mask-wear­ing in the cap­i­tal city on Mon­day. Some peo­ple wore masks while oth­ers took them off the mo­ment the an­nounce­ment was made.

“I feel nice, I feel very nice be­cause I re­al­ly couldn’t take on this. Any op­por­tu­ni­ty I had to take it off I was glad,” Garvin Mur­ray said.

Ray Matthews, who has nev­er con­tract­ed COVID-19 or has any co­mor­bidi­ties said he will con­tin­ue to wear his mask for his safe­ty.

“Doh just drop your stan­dards just like that,” he said.

Some busi­ness­es have since made mask-wear­ing op­tion­al for cus­tomers but their em­ploy­ees were asked to con­tin­ue wear­ing the lay­er of pro­tec­tion.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of Pres­tige Hold­ings Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed Si­mon Hardy said cus­tomers should use their dis­cre­tion as COVID-19 has not gone away.

He said hand sani­ti­sa­tion units will re­main up at their restau­rants.

Some em­ploy­ees of oth­er es­tab­lish­ments in Port-of-Spain said they got no di­rec­tive from man­agers so they al­lowed cus­tomers in whether or not they wore masks.

“Not one per­son came in with­out their mask to­day, peo­ple still wear­ing it be­cause they are scared,” one em­ploy­ee told Guardian Me­dia.

Over the week­end the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion an­nounced that wear­ing masks at gro­ceries was op­tion­al.

One per­son tweet­ed that some busi­ness­es al­ready re­moved their sani­ti­sa­tion and tem­per­a­ture check sta­tions.

The Banker’s As­so­ci­a­tion left this de­ci­sion up to the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and while Re­pub­lic Bank made this op­tion­al from to­day, RBC said it still re­quires its clients to wear masks when en­ter­ing a branch or any of its of­fices.

Peo­ple vis­it­ing any prison fa­cil­i­ty are re­quired to wear a mask. It is op­tion­al on the in­ter-is­land fer­ry and Caribbean Air­lines.

How­ev­er, all these es­tab­lish­ments ad­vised cus­tomers to prac­tice per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

On CNC3’s the Morn­ing Brew Pro­gramme on Mon­day, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber pres­i­dent Richie Sookhai said it was some­thing they had been look­ing for­ward to, even though the world was still in a pan­dem­ic.

He said at fetes and par­ties no one was so­cial dis­tanc­ing and the num­bers re­mained low and the world need­ed to car­ry on.

“I’m very hap­py that the Gov­ern­ment of to­day has tak­en that ini­tia­tive…it’s time for we to take up our­selves as a na­tion, as a coun­try, as a busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to start back ba­sic eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties flow­ing through Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh who al­so ap­peared on the pro­gramme on Mon­day said hos­pi­tals are at 15 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, and the rolling sev­en-day av­er­age was 110-120 which he said is the low­est it has been for some time.