Two days af­ter Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh de­nounced the host­ing of house par­ties that en­cour­age il­le­gal gath­er­ings which can pro­mote the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had cause to ar­rest 25 peo­ple at a par­ty in Mara­bel­la.

This lat­est in­ci­dent oc­curred at a house on Ninth Street, Gopaul Lands, Mara­bel­la around 11.30 on Thurs­day night.

Of the 25 ar­rest­ed - three are teenagers aged 13, 14 and 16.

Af­ter ob­serv­ing nu­mer­ous cars parked along the street and hear­ing loud mu­sic com­ing from the lo­ca­tion, res­i­dents alert­ed po­lice who ar­rived to find the 25 peo­ple play­ing mu­sic, smok­ing, danc­ing, and con­sum­ing al­co­hol.

Of­fi­cers from the Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion led by In­sp Ram­lo­gan, Sgt Ma­haraj and Cpl Singh ar­rest­ed the group whose ages range from 13 to 42, and found that while the ma­jor­i­ty of them were from neigh­bour­ing ar­eas - sev­er­al of them had come from as far as Diego Mar­tin and La Hor­quet­ta.

The teenagers were re­leased in­to the care of their par­ents to be charged by sum­mons.

The group are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trate on Tues­day, charged with breach­ing the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTPS thanked Mara­bel­la res­i­dents for their trust and part­ner­ship in see­ing some­thing and say­ing some­thing as the TTPS con­tin­ues to de­tect and deal with breach­es of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions, in its bid to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

This in­ci­dent fol­lows two sim­i­lar par­ties in St Au­gus­tine and Ma­yaro dur­ing the last two weeks, which health of­fi­cials said posed a threat to com­mu­ni­ties as new in­fec­tions are on the rise across the coun­try.

And with the Delta vari­ant cir­cu­lat­ing in the pop­u­la­tion - there are wor­ries that any spikes in cas­es could lead to the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem be­com­ing over­whelmed.—An­na-Lisa Paul