While the gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing the re­open­ing of beach­es, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says it has not yet set a date. Beach­es on the is­lands were closed on April 15 as COVID-19 in­fec­tions soared, re­sult­ing in a greater de­mand for bed spaces in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem. Rivers and streams have been closed since 2020.

Speak­ing on Aakash Vani 106.5 FM Morn­ing Pan­chay­at, Deyals­ingh said he un­der­stood that peo­ple were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing pan­dem­ic fa­tigue. Cit­i­zens have been clam­our­ing for the re­open­ing of beach­es, with some peo­ple risk­ing be­ing caught and charged un­der the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

Deyals­ingh could not give a date for the re­open­ing. He said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley usu­al­ly makes those de­ci­sions af­ter as­sess­ing the epi­demi­ol­o­gy da­ta. How­ev­er, he said the cur­rent sev­en-day rolling av­er­age was over 200 new cas­es per day, which was un­ac­cept­ably high.

“We still have peo­ple dy­ing every day. We still have 400,000-500,000 adults who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed. So the pop­u­la­tion re­al­ly has to work with us and do their part. If we can get more and more peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed, bring down the sev­en-day rolling av­er­age, bring down the deaths per day, things can get back to more and more nor­mal­cy. So the pop­u­la­tion has to ex­am­ine their col­lec­tive con­science and see how we can work to­geth­er to bring the bad num­ber down,” Deyals­ingh said.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Sep­tem­ber 23, Row­ley said Cab­i­net dis­cussed cre­at­ing safe zones for beach­es and sports. Row­ley hoped that if the Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion at the Min­istry of Health, Dr Av­ery Hinds, pro­vid­ed a favourable re­port on the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion, fol­low­ing the open­ing of safe zones, Cab­i­net an­tic­i­pates it will be able to con­sid­er open­ing up beach­es and sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.
“If we be­have well and we get good re­sults by the mid­dle of Oc­to­ber, we will be con­sid­er­ing those things,” Row­ley said

Re­porter: Kevon Felmine