Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is ap­peal­ing to the pop­u­la­tion not to take ac­tion that would ex­pose mem­bers of the pub­lic to un­nec­es­sary risks in­volv­ing the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19).

And as part of this, he has ad­vised peo­ple to can­cel planned va­ca­tions abroad and re­main at home to en­sure their safe­ty and that of their fam­i­lies.

Dur­ing last Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing, of­fi­cials had ad­vised peo­ple to lim­it their move­ments to on­ly emer­gency and es­sen­tial trav­el.

Re­in­forc­ing this call dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of Health Sat­ur­day, Young said, "We recog­nise at this point that there are a lot of na­tion­als try­ing to make their way back home but per­sons need to un­der­stand the ex­po­sure and risk fac­tor as­so­ci­at­ed right now with trav­el.”

He urged, "Please do not trav­el un­less it is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary, un­less it is an emer­gency."

Young said the virus con­tin­ued to be cir­cu­lat­ed preva­lent­ly at in­ter­na­tion­al air­ports, in cruise ships and re­sorts around the world.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh added, "For per­sons go­ing to To­ba­go for va­ca­tion, think twice.

“If you are go­ing to To­ba­go for busi­ness, where your phys­i­cal pres­ence is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary and you can’t do it over the phone, well then you have to go. But most of the trav­el from Trinidad to To­ba­go are Trinida­di­ans go­ing for leisure and that has to be re­con­sid­ered now."

He even called on sport­ing of­fi­cials to re­vis­it their pro­grammes and im­ple­ment de­ci­sions in keep­ing with the safe­ty of the pop­u­la­tion.

And for those op­er­at­ing par­ty boats, Deyals­ingh al­so cau­tioned against this as he said, "Be­cause on a par­ty boat, you are packed to­geth­er and you don’t know who is next to you."

He urged peo­ple to stay home and vis­it the Pitch Lake and Knol­ly’s Tun­nel as he said, "We need to re­vis­it our lifestyle for the fore­see­able fu­ture un­til sci­en­tists un­der­stand what is COVID-19, un­til we have a prop­er treat­ment and un­til we have a vac­cine be­cause what is go­ing to crip­ple us if we don’t pay at­ten­tion to it…is the sheer vol­ume and num­bers.

"We don’t want 500,000 peo­ple in T&T com­ing down with COVID-19, as mild as it is, be­cause as mild as it is, it will put a drain on the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor hos­pi­tal sys­tems.

"Put off, resched­ule, can­cel any va­ca­tion plans. Your health is much more im­por­tant."

Not­ing he had been forced to make two judg­ment calls with­in a 24-hour pe­ri­od Sat­ur­day, Young said, "It in­clud­ed pre­vent­ing per­sons from get­ting on planes abroad to come to T&T. In one in­stance, I al­so gave au­tho­ri­sa­tion for the block­ing of a par­tic­u­lar plane to come to T&T.

"I will take these de­ci­sions to pro­tect T&T but the mes­sage is per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

At the lev­el of his min­istry, Young said they were pre­pared to do what had to be done, "in­clud­ing to ar­rest per­sons if nec­es­sary for the main­te­nance of pub­lic or­der."

He urged, "Please peo­ple, when the au­thor­i­ties in T&T ask you to do cer­tain things, please lis­ten, it is on­ly for your own good."

He echoed Deyals­ingh’s com­ment on va­ca­tion, say­ing it is not es­sen­tial or emer­gency trav­el and it would be wis­er to can­cel at this stage.

In this re­gard, he said he had to deal with an in­ci­dent at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ear­li­er in the day.

"Dur­ing the course of the day, we were con­tact­ed by per­sons who were not lis­ten­ing to the au­thor­i­ties and they want­ed to get on a flight. The air­line had tak­en a de­ci­sion not to al­low them to board the flight and they ba­si­cal­ly did not want to lis­ten to the air­line and the au­thor­i­ties to move on."

The pas­sen­gers were even­tu­al­ly not al­lowed to board the flight by the au­thor­i­ties.

He said peo­ple with a high-risk pro­file were those the au­thor­i­ties do not want out in the pub­lic at this time.

Re­gard­ing the can­cel­la­tion of mass gath­er­ings, sport­ing events and oth­er events of a sim­i­lar na­ture, Deyals­ingh con­grat­u­lat­ed Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don for tak­ing the bold de­ci­sion to sus­pend Mass­es from Sat­ur­day, as these qual­i­fied as mass gath­er­ings were many el­der­ly peo­ple, who are among those most vul­ner­a­ble, usu­al­ly are in at­ten­dance.

He said, "This is where so­ci­ety is fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment and tak­ing the lead."

On the is­sue of so­cial dis­tanc­ing, Young said be­hav­iour­al changes were need­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.

Deyals­ingh said he had been dis­cour­aged from us­ing the do­mes­tic air-bridge as a pre­cau­tion and in­stead, he now in­tends to use tech­nol­o­gy to host cru­cial meet­ings with se­nior of­fi­cials in To­ba­go to bring them up to speed with the na­tion­al ac­tion plan.

Asked if Gov­ern­ment had held any dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing im­ple­ment­ing poli­cies that could as­sist busi­ness­es who would now take a fi­nan­cial hit, Young said sub-Cab­i­net dis­cus­sions were tak­ing place as it re­lat­ed to hu­man re­source is­sues. He said the Min­istry of Fi­nance was look­ing at the sit­u­a­tion but it was a flu­id one which was still un­fold­ing.