At a Press Conference on 5th December 2020, Prime Minister Keith Rowley announced a target date of 8th February 2021 was set for standard 5 primary school pupils to physically return to school. This target date also applied to secondary school students in forms 4 - 6. The Prime Minister did warn the public at that time, however, saying that if they did not behave accordingly during the Christmas and New Year celebrations, this target date would not become a reality. Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Roshan Parasram, previously said that the full impact of these celebrations may not be seen until the end of January 2021. As we are now approaching the target date set by the Prime Minister, it remains unclear whether these plans will proceed as the Ministry of Health is concerned about the rising COVID-19 cases in Trinidad and Tobago. At the Ministry’s virtual Press Conference this morning (Wednesday 20th January 2021), Technical Director of the Ministry’s Epidemiology Division, Dr. Avery Hinds, indicated that COVID-19 cases for 2021 are on an upward trajectory. ”The new cases per day are inching upwards. If you look at the number of new cases per week, you’d see that in the last three completed calendar or epidemiologic weeks. we’d have had a steady increase from 58 cases in the last week of 2020 to 82 cases in the first week of 2021 and 126 in this last completed week.” Dr. Hinds noted that this is a concerning development and urged the public to avoid any gatherings or congregations. At the same Press Conference this morning, CMO Dr. Parasram said Officials from both the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education will meet on Thursday morning (21st January 2021) to discuss the re-opening of schools. “We’re having a discussion with the Ministry - that’s the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education - called by the Honourable Minister, on Thursday morning to discuss what is going to happen with the school situation.” The CMO did not give any further details on this topic. The current form of the Public Health Regulations was extended for a second time earlier this week. According to the CMO: The maintenance of the status quo is based on what has happened over the Christmas season and what we saw by way of public health measures not being adhered to. The numbers, as Dr. Hinds has said, continues to rise, so expectantly, we won’t be able to relax anything at this point at least. If a decision is made on Thursday as to whether schools will re-open on 8th February 2021, the Prime Minister may make the announcement this Saturday (23rd January 2021) at a Press Conference. Schools have been closed since 14th March 2020, the day after the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in T&T. [Source: T&T Guardian]
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