Gail Alexan­der

“The US is no ex­am­ple for us,”

So said Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day in re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries on the amount of COVID-19 test­ing be­ing done here com­pared with in­ter­na­tion­al test­ing stan­dards.

In Par­lia­ment, Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh asked Row­ley whether he was sat­is­fied with the amount of test­ing be­ing done and whether test­ing had sup­plied enough in­for­ma­tion to con­tribute to de­ci­sion-mak­ing to open dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

Gopeesingh not­ed T&T’s test­ing lev­el was 0.07 per cent while the US lev­el was three per cent.

Row­ley said he knew of no in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard and all coun­tries are learn­ing as they go along. De­pend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion in T&T, the test­ing pro­gramme is tai­lored to suit. He added that the Gov­ern­ment is con­fi­dent it is us­ing a pro­gramme suit­able for T&T and is tak­ing ad­vice from lo­cal pub­lic health ex­perts.

“We’re not com­par­ing our­selves to the US which took a dif­fer­ent ap­proach,” he said, adding the US al­so got in­to a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion.

“The US is no ex­am­ple for us,” Row­ley de­clared.

Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Fuad Khan asked if Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to keep small and medi­um busi­ness­es closed while al­low­ing food places and con­glom­er­ates to open would de­crease COVID cas­es.

Row­ley said the de­ci­sion to leave some busi­ness­es closed had to do with the man­age­ment of the move­ment of peo­ple. He said food places opened in Phase One of the plan for re­laxed re­stric­tions, in­clud­ed “all cat­e­gories of small, medi­um and large food busi­ness­es.”

He said lo­cal gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties and pub­lic health have over­sight on this and food busi­ness­es are the best place to con­tin­ue en­force­ment mea­sures.

Khan asked why the Gov­ern­ment couldn’t give small and medi­um busi­ness­es a chance to sur­vive if there were no new COVID-19 cas­es. Row­ley said risk was in­volved in the man­age­ment of num­bers.

“So you open some ar­eas . . . this ap­proach is one of mea­sur­ing the risk as you go for­ward. Test­ing will de­ter­mine how fast or slow we go,”

In the case of na­tion­als who went over­seas for surgery, Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands there are peo­ple on both sides of the bor­ders but needs to pro­tect peo­ple in T&T. He said ap­pli­ca­tions for ex­emp­tions are be­ing con­sid­ered on a case by case ba­sis and as far as grant­i­ng these with­out com­pro­mis­ing the bor­der clo­sure, “that will con­tin­ue.”

Row­ley al­so said the Fi­nance Min­istry is eval­u­at­ing ten­ders of­fered for mak­ing masks. These will be pro­vid­ed as soon as con­tracts are award­ed in a few days. He said Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to move fast but is try­ing to com­ply with re­quire­ments for ac­count­ing for pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture. A sep­a­rate num­ber of masks done by FEEL were do­nat­ed by cit­i­zens.

Row­ley said as of May 14, some 12,162 peo­ple had re­ceived salary re­lief grants cost­ing tax­pay­ers $ 16.7 mil­lion. On why new grants were not done per week, he said the process is turn­ing out to be slow­er than an­tic­i­pat­ed and the state had to en­sure mon­ey is go­ing on­ly to those who qual­i­fied.