(Trinidad Express) The Ministry of Health will be looking into stricter regulations for the operations of bars following reports of poor public health practices across the country. This after bars were last week reopened by the government in phase five of the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions.
Speaking at a virtual media conference yesterday, Minister of Health Terrance Deyalsingh indicated that the reopening of bars globally has prompted a return to lockdown protocols in some countries. This, he said, is because of the relaxed behaviour of patrons who may not strictly adhere to the measures in place.
“At an earlier press conference I did indicate that the nature of bars is not one that would lend itself to proper public health measures. If you look globally to what is happening when bars open, one of the flashpoints for increased number of cases is in fact bars, beaches and so soon. In many countries, states, regions and sometimes entire countries have had to re-lockdown their economies, put more people out of work because of the behaviour of patrons in bars,” he said.
He spoke of videos on social media of overpopulated bars and poor social distancing practices in Chaguanas and North Trinidad. In light of such reports, which he referred to as disturbing, he asked that owners and patrons abide by stricter distancing and hygiene standards.
“We are sadly noticing that happening in Trinidad and Tobago, more Trinidad. There is a video circulating about a bar in Chaguanas and a bar in North Trinidad where the bars are jam packed, people are in each other’s faces, partying and it’s very disturbing. So, we are going to do two things this morning. We are asking both bar owners and patrons to please exercise some discretion in how you use and operate bars, it is for your own good,” said Deyalsingh.
He said that the Chief Medical Officer and the Ministry of Health will be looking into stricter bar operation measures to be enshrined into the existing COVID-19 Public Health Regulations.
“The Chief Medical Officer and myself, we are now looking at what stricter measures we can put to manage the operations in bars because the free for all that is happening has the potential of taking this country back to where it was three months ago and we can’t allow that. We just heard the minister of Finance say how many hundreds of millions of dollars that the taxpayer is spending on all of these types of relief.”
“We can’t let one sector of the business community operate in such a way that will do two things, send us back to where we were three months ago, have more people unemployed, and put more strain on the healthcare system. So, in closing I am asking bar owners and patrons to manage their operations. I am asking patrons to exercise some caution but we are going to be looking, from today we have started already to see what special regulations we can put in to manage the operations of bars and to curtail the type of behaviour we are seeing in bars,” he said.