The Caribbean COVID-19 Task Force has not­ed the pres­ence of vari­ants in the re­gion that spread more rapid­ly.

Yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­post­ed a CC­CTF state­ment that stat­ed that dili­gence and vac­cines are key to Caribbean’s tourism re­cov­ery.

The Task Force is call­ing for con­tin­ued dili­gence and ad­her­ence to pub­lic health safe­ty pro­to­cols, as it en­cour­ages all tourism-re­lat­ed stake­hold­ers who are able to do so to be vac­ci­nat­ed as they be­come avail­able.

The Task Force said the Caribbean has gen­er­al­ly been suc­cess­ful in con­tain­ing the virus over the past year to lev­els be­low those which are be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in many parts of the world.

COVID-19 in­fec­tion, hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and death rates are among the low­est in the world in the re­gion.

“This has been at­trib­uted to the ear­ly and on­go­ing re­sponse by many Caribbean gov­ern­ments, health­care and tourism in­dus­try lead­ers, and the large num­ber of Caribbean res­i­dents who have ad­hered to health safe­ty pro­to­cols,” it said.

The Task Force cau­tioned that now is not the time to ‘let down our guard’, as the next sev­er­al months will de­ter­mine how quick­ly the tourism-de­pen­dent re­gion will be able to re­bound. Tourism is viewed by many as the cat­a­lyst for get­ting peo­ple back to work and restor­ing much-need­ed rev­enue that gov­ern­ments have lost due to the pan­dem­ic.

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency, Dr Joy St John, on CCTF’s be­half, said, “We are now in a race against time, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the pres­ence of vari­ants which spread more rapid­ly, we must ad­here to health safe­ty pro­to­cols lest we find our­selves mov­ing back­wards, rather than for­wards. We must re­main dili­gent while we con­tin­ue to ac­cel­er­ate vac­ci­na­tions of our pop­u­la­tions, now that ap­proved vac­cines are be­com­ing more avail­able.

“We urge coun­tries to con­tin­ue to in­ten­si­fy their sur­veil­lance ac­tiv­i­ties to rapid­ly screen, iden­ti­fy, test, quar­an­tine, iso­late and trace con­tacts of new cas­es; and for every res­i­dent and vis­i­tor to the Caribbean to do their part through phys­i­cal/so­cial dis­tanc­ing, wear­ing of masks, and prac­tis­ing prop­er hand hy­giene.”