Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­nounced that the coun­try’s bor­ders will be locked down to all out­siders for the next 14 days.

Dr Row­ley made the an­nounce­ment at a news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre Mon­day morn­ing fol­low­ing a Spe­cial Cab­i­net Meet­ing.

“Cab­i­net met this morn­ing and has tak­en the de­ci­sion that Trinidad and To­ba­go will cease to en­cour­age and fa­cil­i­tate for the next 14 days, en­try in­to this coun­try ex­cept for peo­ple who are na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Dr Row­ley said.

He made it clear that on­ly na­tion­als of this coun­try will be al­lowed in.

Dr Row­ley said that ex­emp­tions will be giv­en to health work­ers who may need to en­ter the coun­try.

“Oth­er than that we are ba­si­cal­ly dis­con­nect­ing our­selves from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for the next 14 days,” he said.

He added that this will have sig­nif­i­cant ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the na­tion­al air­line, Caribbean Air­lines.

He said the Gov­ern­ment will look at the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund to help sus­tain the coun­try but added that “the health and safe­ty of the cit­i­zens of our coun­try is pri­or­i­ty num­ber one.”

“We have to iso­late our­selves from the sup­ply, the source of the virus out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“We are in a cri­sis. We are in an emer­gency. There is no game say­ing that,” he said.

He said there are cur­rent­ly 75 el­der­ly cit­i­zens in the Caribbean who are try­ing to come home and will be al­lowed to do so.

Lo­cal­ly, the prime min­is­ter added that all bars will be closed with­in T&T.

He said the gov­ern­ment is al­so ad­vis­ing against that all gath­er­ings be­yond 25 per­sons.

This is a de­vel­op­ing sto­ry. We will have more lat­er.