In a som­bre ad­dress to the na­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley tonight re­traced the events of the last two years of the COVID-19 virus, its ar­rival and treat­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go and warned that if the cur­rent in­fec­tion rate con­tin­ues, the par­al­lel health sys­tem would be over­whelmed with­in days.

"Based on the in­creas­ing num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es over the past weeks, and with no de­crease in sight, the num­ber of deaths has con­tin­ued to in­crease with dozens of per­sons los­ing their lives on a dai­ly ba­sis," the Prime Min­is­ter said.

The Prime Min­is­ter de­tailed the ac­tions of sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries which in­clud­ed pro­tract­ed lock­downs, cur­fews, re­stric­tions on the un­vac­ci­nat­ed, en­forced vac­ci­na­tions, and in­cen­tives for vac­ci­na­tions.

"I men­tion these sit­u­a­tions and de­ci­sions so that if it ever gets to the point where we have to adopt any of these ad­di­tion­al mea­sures, it will not be be­cause we are in­com­pe­tent, ar­ro­gant, dic­ta­to­r­i­al or an­ti-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic. It would sim­ply mean that our sit­u­a­tion de­mands it and we do live on plan­et earth where COVID-19 is at­tempt­ing to reign pre­dom­i­nate," the Prime Min­is­ter said.

He said that if the cur­rent trends con­tin­ue, the par­al­lel health care sys­tem will be over­whelmed in a mat­ter of days.

"As such, this will man­i­fest in our in­abil­i­ty to pro­vide care, not on­ly to our COVID-19 pa­tients but to our oth­er pa­tients ac­cess­ing gen­er­al med­ical care and emer­gency care.

Our health care sys­tem is fi­nite and we will be forced, once again to pull re­sources from non-COVID-19 sites in­to the par­al­lel health care sys­tem," he said.

Row­ley re­vealed that the coun­try spent over half a bil­lion dol­lars to ac­quire the req­ui­site vac­cines and he be­moaned the dip in vac­ci­na­tions num­bers.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it seems that we have been de­sen­si­tized and the pop­u­la­tion is no longer stirred to wise ac­tion by this alarm­ing trend. There is lit­tle change in pub­lic be­hav­iour and at­ti­tude as well as a dras­tic re­duc­tion in the rate of vac­ci­na­tion, even in the face of in­creas­ing COVID-19 deaths," he said.

De­spite the ris­ing COVID-19 num­bers and the fact that to­day is the dead­liest day on record with a stag­ger­ing 31 peo­ple who suc­cumbed to the virus, the Prime Min­is­ter main­tained that the coun­try would not go back in­to lock­down mode. The an­nounce­ment al­layed the ma­jor­i­ty of fears ex­pressed on so­cial me­dia.

"We will con­tin­ue to keep our econ­o­my open. There have been a num­ber of de­mands for fur­ther open­ing up of the few ar­eas which are still un­der re­stric­tions," he said.

How­ev­er, for now, beach­es and rivers will re­main closed.

"Much as I would like to open up beach­es and rivers, as I want­ed to do a few weeks ago, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion mil­i­tates against that," he said.

"I did say ear­li­er that I am hop­ing that we could open beach­es for Christ­mas. I’m still on that,' the Prime Min­is­ter said.

He said he would give the num­bers a cou­ple of weeks to see "where they are tak­ing us'.

"And if there is no fur­ther sig­nif­i­cant de­te­ri­o­ra­tion, we could start with ear­ly morn­ing beach open­ings from say 5:00 am to 12:00 noon. We should be able to have ther­a­peu­tic dips at dawn with­out the par­ties at af­ter­noon and sun­set," he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that with Christ­mas around the cor­ner, the cit­i­zens must be care­ful not to let cus­tom­ary sea­son­al gath­er­ings "push us over the edge."

The Prime Min­is­ter tonight not­ed that Car­ni­val 2022 would be on, but look very dif­fer­ent as there would be no street pa­rade or gath­er­ing for un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple. How­ev­er, there would be des­ig­nat­ed safe zones for vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple to gath­er for events.

"We have al­ready sig­nalled to the pop­u­la­tion that we are es­ca­lat­ing the emer­gency re­sponse lev­els in the pub­lic health care sys­tem and have alert­ed sup­port­ing agen­cies of the po­ten­tial need for re­in­force­ments. We would do well to pon­der on what the next phase of the COVID-19 re­sponse might look like if we con­tin­ue on this tra­jec­to­ry," he warned.

Row­ley list­ed sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries that have re-im­ple­ment­ed harsh­er mea­sures of cur­fews and strict guide­lines for un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

"As with any emer­gency re­sponse, as the de­mand on health care re­sources in­creas­es, we may have no choice but to redi­rect our ef­forts from pro­vid­ing the high­est lev­el of care to a few, to pro­vid­ing the great­est good for the great­est num­ber of per­sons. This is the re­al­i­ty that we face," he said.

Key points to note from Dr Row­ley's ad­dress:

1.No beach­es or rivers yet but PM weigh­ing a mod­er­at­ed open­ing be­fore Christ­mas, in­clud­ing re­strict­ed ac­cess times from 5 am to 12 noon.

2. Car­ni­val would look dif­fer­ent next year with no street pa­rade, or un­vac­ci­nat­ed gath­er­ings but spe­cif­ic "safe zones" would be iden­ti­fied for events.

3. No lock­down, econ­o­my re­mains open but PM urged the pub­lic to be care­ful with the fes­tiv­i­ties over the Christ­mas pe­ri­od.

4. Gov­ern­ment has spent over half a bil­lion dol­lars, $509 mil­lion, on fight­ing the COVID-19 virus.

5. The coun­try would soon reach the lim­it of its abil­i­ty to pro­vide care for those who are ill if we do not make dras­tic changes now.