Camille McEach­nie

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he will not com­mit to a date for when this coun­try’s bor­ders will re­open. How­ev­er, it seems this could well come af­ter the ma­jor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pop­u­la­tion and those of some of the ma­jor coun­tries have vac­ci­nat­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of their pop­u­la­tions against the COVID-19 virus.

Row­ley made the com­ment at a press con­fer­ence at the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to ques­tions on when the pop­u­la­tion could ex­pect to see the re­open­ing of the bor­ders.

“The open­ing of bor­ders was al­ways very heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by the dis­cov­ery and avail­abil­i­ty of a vac­cine or vac­cines. We are now at the stage where vac­cine avail­abil­i­ty is now reach­ing a point where we could think in terms of in­oc­u­lat­ing the pop­u­la­tions that will be mix­ing,” Row­ley said.

He added: “The Unit­ed States, our main con­tact out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go, has in­di­cat­ed that...by May their pop­u­la­tion should have vac­cines and be suf­fi­cient­ly in­oc­u­lat­ed where peo­ple can mix with­out the fear of heavy or any in­fec­tions at all. Once that hap­pens...then the open­ing of bor­ders will be­come a re­al­i­ty.”

The bor­ders were closed in March 2020 to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19 and per­sons leav­ing and en­ter­ing T&T have had to ap­ply to do so. Na­tion­als who re­turn home are al­so fac­ing quar­an­tine at state or pri­vate fa­cil­i­ties un­til Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials are sat­is­fied they are free from in­fec­tions.

The PM was al­so asked how soon the rest of the coun­try will see a fur­ther rolling back of mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed to pre­vent the spread of the virus.

He said the Gov­ern­ment has been open­ing up dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the coun­try, as ev­i­denced by the par­tial in-per­son open­ing of schools and lim­it­ed out­door sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. He said more ar­eas would re­open or ex­pand as the num­ber of in­fec­tions re­duces.

“As we get those re­sults (COVID in­for­ma­tion) we take a lit­tle more risks...and go fur­ther and fur­ther,” he said.

There has been no in-per­son school in this coun­try for al­most one year. On Feb­ru­ary 8, the par­tial in-per­son re­turn of stu­dents to school re­sumed for 4-6 for­m­ers. Since then, one stu­dent at­tend­ing the Ma­son Hall Sec­ondary School has been in­fect­ed and the school was closed tem­porar­i­ly.

On Feb­ru­ary 17, front-line work­ers be­gan re­ceiv­ing their vac­cines af­ter the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment shared some of its sup­ply from the In­di­an gov­ern­ment with T&T. (CM)