By: Staff Writer
April 1, 2022
Trinidad’s National Carnival Commission Chairman says COVID-19 safeguards was the key phrase for the country’s Carnival celebrations this past February and other countries looking to do theirs can learn from this as he promises the “great grandmother” of all Carnivals in 2023.
Winston “Gypsy” Peters, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that they had over 200 sanitising stations around the Carnival venue spaces, “we put all of the safeguards in place.”
He also said: “After Carnival, we had no spike in COVID-19 cases. Everything went smoothly,” which is good news to hear as the arrangements for this year’s Carnival was blasted as unsafe and dangerous considering the country was still fighting the COVID-19 pandemic tooth and nail. “Well, we did the best that we can with following all of the protocols in the best way we could have everybody safe. It looks like it worked well, because we had no spike in cases.”
The NCC also implemented “pods” to keep people socially distanced. The pods could have accommodated groups of six and nine. Segregated pods at a usually raucous Carnival seems antithetical, but it was done so the Trinidadian entertainers could have their moment without risk of putting their fans in danger of contracting the virus.
Mt Peters also said: “It was it was alright. We had we had not a full-fledged Carnival, but we had what was called a ‘Taste of Carnival’.
“Anytime you’re trying to do something new, people would always find trepidation in it. But that’s okay, it came out very well and we did a good job.”
A limited amount of tourists were let into this year’s Carnival as well, “The CFO normally tells you how much are our people come in,” said Mr Peters. He continued, “But this year was not primarily to bring in people into the country as much as it was to ensure that we kept our Trinidad and Tobago space in the Carnival scenario, and to ensure that some of the artisans of Carnival had something to do after two years without doing anything, with the restlessness that stepped in.
“So we wanted to make sure that everybody had an opportunity to showcase or highlight some of the talent. Not all of it, but some of it and it was a very good test. We did have some tourists in by the way. That was not the primary reason for having it because like I said, it was a Taste of Carnival. It was mostly geared towards the local audience and local people, showcasing what they can do.”
More tourists will be let in for the 2023 Carnival, so get your Carnival outfit ready to party in T&T. “All we have to do is be safe and put the safeguards in place,” said Mr Peters.
He also said: “Well, the trajectory of this whole COVID-19 thing seems to be very, very good. It looks like it’s heading in the right direction, which is down and as long as it keeps on doing that we are going to have a full-fledged Carnival, which we are going to be catering for everybody to come into our country and have a carnival and enjoy it to the max.
“I want to say that as long as this COVID thing doesn’t goes away, or we are able to live with it in a in a way that we could have some form of real normalcy. We are going to have not only the model of Carnival where we are going to have the mother, the grandmother, the great grandmother of Carnival in Trinidad 2023”