Loyse Vin­cent

To­ba­go Health of­fi­cials are con­cerned that there may be an in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es on the is­land fol­low­ing Mon­day’s To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Elec­tions.

The con­cern comes af­ter Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment sup­port­ers open­ly flout­ed COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions dur­ing a cam­paign meet­ing at the Cyd Gray Sport­ing Com­plex in Rox­bor­ough on Wednes­day night.

Par­ty sup­port­ers open­ly in­ter-min­gled with each oth­er as they danced and wined to so­ca star Farmer Nap­py’s call as he threw them in­to a fren­zy dur­ing a per­for­mance of his 2021 hit Back­yard Jam. While some sup­port­ers wore masks, oth­ers didn’t and there was no so­cial dis­tanc­ing as the meet­ing took on a Car­ni­val-like at­mos­phere.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who had ad­dressed par­ty sup­port­ers mo­ments be­fore the per­for­mance, had asked the coun­cil mem­bers for a gift in cel­e­bra­tion of the par­ty’s 65th an­niver­sary and they, in turn, re­spond­ed by so­lic­it­ing Farmer Nap­py’s per­for­mance and their re­sponse to it.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue yes­ter­day, Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health (To­ba­go) Dr Tiffany Hoyte ex­pressed con­cern over the lack of ad­her­ence to the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions. 

“Any­time you have any mass gath­er­ing that is the con­cern, whether you have elec­tions, whether it be church, whether it be what­ev­er, any kind of mass gath­er­ings and you know it’s hap­pen­ing fre­quent­ly, we are on the look­out. We have height­ened our sur­veil­lance, we are wait­ing to see what hap­pens with the num­bers.”  

Hoyte as­sured, how­ev­er, that the is­land’s health­care sys­tem is pre­pared for the even­tu­al­i­ty of an in­crease on cas­es fol­low­ing the elec­tion, as was seen in Trinidad fol­low­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion. 

Af­ter the Gen­er­al Elec­tion on Au­gust 10 last year, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that due to the ram­pant spread of COVID-19 in T&T, a num­ber of re­stric­tions had to be re-im­ple­ment­ed from Au­gust 17. A num­ber of those re­stric­tions are still in place, in­clud­ing the clo­sure of schools and day­cares, no in-house con­sump­tion of al­co­hol at bars and restau­rants and no more than 10 per­sons be­ing al­lowed at pub­lic events.

Row­ley him­self, who on­ly re­cent­ly had a heart pro­ce­dure done, had to go in­to self-quar­an­tine last Au­gust, af­ter it was re­vealed that some­one he came in­to con­tact with dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of the PNM’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion vic­to­ry had test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

Among the PNM of­fi­cials at Wednes­day’s meet­ing was Min­is­ter of Sport Sham­fa Cud­joe. Sev­er­al peo­ple ex­pressed out­rage at this on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, as Cud­joe, who was out of the coun­try from De­cem­ber 16 last year to Jan­u­ary 11, should still be in quar­an­tine un­til Jan­u­ary 25 in ob­ser­vance of the manda­to­ry 14-day quar­an­tine for cit­i­zens re­turn­ing from abroad.

Cud­joe al­so spoke on the plat­form at last night’s PNM meet­ing in Mt Pleas­ant.  

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Sec­re­tary of Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine, who is al­so the leader of the PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil, on the is­sue yes­ter­day but she did not re­turn calls or mes­sages. How­ev­er, her com­mu­ni­ca­tions team said up­on ar­rival to PNM meet­ings, at­ten­dees must hand sani­tise and are giv­en a mask if they do not have one.  

“At­ten­dees are al­so giv­en small bot­tles of sani­tis­er at the meet­ings and per­sons are in­di­vid­u­al­ly ad­vised of all COVID guide­lines and the law and rules of seat­ing,” one of David­son-Ce­les­tine’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions team mem­bers said. 

The com­mu­ni­ca­tions team al­so said venues with am­ple seat­ing and field space are al­so used so that peo­ple can com­fort­ably so­cial dis­tance. How­ev­er, they ad­mit­ted that there may be sev­er­al mem­bers of a fam­i­ly from one house­hold who at­tend the events to­geth­er and mar­shals al­so con­sis­tent­ly keep an eye on any po­ten­tial crowd­ing and cor­rect it im­me­di­ate­ly. 

Both the PNM and the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots have been guilty of flout­ing the COVID rules on the cam­paign trail.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, PDP deputy leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine ad­mit­ted is­sues with full com­pli­ance un­der the COVID reg­u­la­tions.  

“It is re­al­ly dif­fi­cult to hold an elec­tion dur­ing COVID-19 and in a space where the cit­i­zen­ry isn’t by vast or sig­nif­i­cant ma­jor­i­ty able to ac­cess mes­sag­ing vir­tu­al­ly. Some things have to give. We have been do­ing the dri­ve-in meet­ings and we have been re­mind­ing peo­ple to keep on their masks. There is com­pli­ance for the most part but you know hu­man be­ings. Thank­ful­ly, the elec­tion sea­son is com­ing to an end soon.” 

Al­so con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, Sr Supt Anand Rame­sar, who heads the TTPS To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, said his of­fi­cers had been in­struct­ed to main­tain law and or­der by be­ing vis­i­ble at po­lit­i­cal meet­ings to en­sure all COVID-19 pro­to­cols are ob­served. He promised to look in­to the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, oth­er se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials, who did not want to be named, said they were puz­zled over why the ac­tiv­i­ty was al­lowed to go on, since they had spe­cif­ic in­struc­tions to deal with COVID breach­es af­ter con­cerns were raised about such ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing po­lit­i­cal meet­ings last week.