Deyalsingh: You can refuse service

JUST LIKE bar owners who ban shirtless patrons, shopkeepers can and must block entry to anyone not wearing a mask or practising physical distancing in the businessplace, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh urged at Monday’s covid19 virtual briefing.

While glad for that day’s reopening of shops, he said heightened activity meant more risk of virus transmission from person to person, as he encouraged the continued use of masks, hand sanitiser and to adhere to physical distancing.

“No mask, no service. I am appealing to retail outlet owners, managers, mall owners...the same way a bar can have a sign up, ‘No bare back, no sleeveless (sic), no slippers,’ you too have the authority to tell people, ‘No mask, no service.’

“This is your contribution towards keeping us safe.” Anyone entering a business premises must use hand sanitiser, he added. Deyalsingh welcomed Monday’s expected rise in economic activity, but also said everyone must be responsible for public hygiene.

He lamented that limers in Port of Spain and San Juan, plus taxi drivers and maxi-taxi drivers he had met on his way to work Monday, were mostly not wearing masks. The minister urged them to emulate doubles vendors, who largely sport masks.

He said not one taxi driver he had seen at the Aranguez stand was wearing a mask. He hoped to soon meet various maxi-taxi associations. Deyalsingh later said if the 97 per cent of people who are able to wear masks do so, this will create “herd immunity” in the population and so protect the three per cent unable to wear masks, such as asthmatics.

Deyalsingh said the most recent covid19 case was an imported one, brought to TT from Houston, Texas by air ambulance, but this person’s family group was not allowed home, thereby eliminating any need to do contact tracing for them.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram later said the patient was a mildly positive case now at a convalescent stage, with few or no symptoms, who is better placed in a step-down facility than a hospital.

Saying an ill-informed person had said TT has 1,000 available beds for quarantine/isolation and so 1,000 people should be let into TT, Deyalsingh said, “You can’t flip a switch. It has to be a gradual, well thought out, measured process.” Deyalsingh said the Princess Elizabeth Centre will reopen its walk-in service and restart elective surgeries.

Replying to Newsday’s question, he said anti-covid19 precautions will be monitored by public health inspectors and county medical officers of health.

However, he could not promise any reopening of beaches, bars and gyms soon.

As the Prime Minister last Saturday invited all to visit Tobago, Newsday asked if Tobago’s beaches will reopen soon, as a mainstay of that island’s economy. Deyalsingh replied that no decision on reopening beaches has been made, whether in Trinidad or Tobago, with reopening now focused on economic activity, and not leisure.

He blanked gyms as places of high personal contact, where people inhale and exhale deeply. “The risk of infection in a gym is very, very high, extremely high,” he said.

On Dr Rowley’s recent raising from five to ten people the number allowed at a funeral, Deyalsingh said this increase will not apply to weddings and christenings. He expected 69 more people to return to TT this week, saying this staggered approach to re-entry would bring the number of recent returnees to 136.