Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young says Trinidad and To­ba­go will close its in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders com­plete­ly from mid­night Sun­day (March 22) to pre­vent the spread of the nov­el Coro­n­avirus (COVID-19).

Young made the an­nounce­ment at a press con­fer­ence on mea­sures to pre­vent the spread of the virus on Sat­ur­day, not­ing that the air­ports will be closed to all in­ter­na­tion­al flights un­til fur­ther no­tice.

The move came even as Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed that there are 40 new cas­es of the virus in Trinidad and To­ba­go, tak­ing the over­all na­tion­al fig­ure to 49 cas­es.

The 40 new cas­es were from among the batch of 68 na­tion­als who were im­me­di­ate­ly quar­an­tined at Camp Ba­lan­dra af­ter they re­turned home from an ill-fat­ed Caribbean cruise in Guade­loupe on Wednes­day.

Young said air and sea car­go will still be al­lowed in­to the coun­try but the crews from those ves­sels will not be al­lowed the dis­em­bark and all peo­ple traf­fic, both na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als, will not be al­lowed en­try by ei­ther air or sea. How­ev­er, he said trav­ellers were free to leave the coun­try but would not be al­lowed to re-en­ter. He al­so said the do­mes­tic air and sea bridges will re­main open at this time but this will be re­viewed along the way.

“We recog­nise the dif­fi­cul­ties that peo­ple are go­ing to face per­son­al­ly, but the pub­lic in­ter­est in a bal­anc­ing ex­er­cise is about pro­tec­tion of life,” he said.

Young said the T&T na­tion­als who were strand­ed in coun­tries which had shut down their bor­ders, in­clud­ing cas­es he had be­come aware of in Venezuela and Guyana, could not be helped at this stage, since those coun­tries had al­so tak­en the de­ci­sions to shut down their air­ports to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had no doubt this was the best mea­sure at this time to pre­vent the virus from spread­ing across the coun­try and urged all cit­i­zens to fol­low the pro­to­col.

“The on­ly way we will stop the spread of this virus is by lack of con­tact and so­cial per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and the Gov­ern­ment took the de­ci­sive ac­tion to say that we will shut bars,” he said.

“We un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ty that this caus­es busi­ness­es, we are very mind­ful of that, that came up in our dis­cus­sions at the de­lib­er­a­tions but it is not busi­ness as usu­al, un­for­tu­nate­ly, around the globe. So we have to take these hard de­ci­sions to pro­tect the peo­ple on Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing the fam­i­ly mem­bers of the own­ers of these es­tab­lish­ments.”

He said just be­fore the press con­fer­ence they al­so re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that bet­ting shops were still be­ing opened. Say­ing they fell un­der the re­cent­ly de­clare Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance law, Young urged that this be stopped.

He al­so urged re­li­gious lead­ers to de­sist from hold­ing gath­er­ings, not­ing that one pas­tor in Cen­tral Trinidad was still invit­ing his con­gre­ga­tion to events.

“This virus is spread by con­tact and any­one who doesn’t un­der­stand that at this stage has a se­ri­ous prob­lem,” he said.