KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment’s re­moval of sig­nif­i­cant re­stric­tions in the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions on Mon­day rep­re­sent­ed an ease-up for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in hav­ing to po­lice the pan­dem­ic.


How­ev­er, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wen­dell Williams says the COVID-19 Task Force will still mon­i­tor the changes to de­ter­mine how it op­er­ates in this new era.

Speak­ing by phone yes­ter­day, Williams said he does not sup­pose it would be dif­fi­cult for the Task Force to man­age the in­creased ac­tiv­i­ties but not­ed it will not adopt a lais­sez-faire at­ti­tude to polic­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Now that gyms, eater­ies, bars and cin­e­mas no longer need to func­tion as safe zones for vac­ci­nat­ed cus­tomers, he said there is less work for po­lice on the COVID-19 front.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cers will en­force those re­main­ing as­pects of the reg­u­la­tions, such as manda­to­ry mask-wear­ing in pub­lic. 


“We will up­hold them, not try­ing to be over-strin­gent with peo­ple. We will have to do a re­stock as to what we are re­quired to do. I think it is a lit­tle bit pre­ma­ture to jump and say. We know that they are still sup­posed to be wear­ing masks and the reg­u­la­tions are still there re­gard­ing that.

“That is clear and we will look at it gen­er­al­ly be­cause I think it is a new shift, and there may even come some added reg­u­la­tions in time to come, de­pend­ing on what takes place,” Williams said.


With thou­sands of lives lost over the last two years, Williams, who leads the Task Force, said the coun­try has been through the tur­moil of COVID-19 and its un­cer­tain­ties. He said the use of home test kits to di­ag­nose COVID-19 does not give a holis­tic re­flec­tion of the spread of COVID-19. How­ev­er, he not­ed that what is im­por­tant is few­er hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions.

The Task Force hopes that vac­ci­na­tions will mit­i­gate against an­oth­er rapid spread of the coro­n­avirus.


As for free­doms that peo­ple took ad­van­tage of yes­ter­day, Williams said it was too ear­ly to com­ment on them. He said the Task Force’s role was to sup­port the Min­istry of Health to keep peo­ple safe. There­fore, the is­sues trend­ing in the min­istry de­ter­mine how the Task Force op­er­ates.

“The task looks like less work for us but de­pends on what emerges and trends go­ing for­ward. Big and de­vel­oped coun­tries made cer­tain changes and they had to shut down. I do not ex­pect we have to do that, but the fact of the mat­ter is, de­pend­ing on what we face, you will find that we may have to be­come more ac­tive again in terms of en­forc­ing cer­tain things. But for now, it is ease-up for every­body.”

The Task Force con­tin­ues to op­er­ate as there are in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to sev­er­al breach­es of the reg­u­la­tions that it start­ed. Williams said there was a need for peo­ple to fo­cus on those in­ves­ti­ga­tions, as en­force­ment was nec­es­sary across the Po­lice Ser­vice.