The mask man­date im­ple­ment­ed by the Gov­ern­ment for the en­tire pe­ri­od of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic may soon be a thing of the past, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing dur­ing the open­ing of the Fish Fry Fa­cil­i­ty in Care­nage, Row­ley said he was ex­pect­ing to have a dis­cus­sion with Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh soon to see whether the health reg­u­la­tions could be amend­ed to al­low cit­i­zens to wear masks vol­un­tar­i­ly.

The Prime Min­is­ter, who re­turned home on Thurs­day night af­ter a three-week ab­sence while un­der­go­ing med­ical check-ups in the US, said he made the de­ci­sion to re­view the man­date af­ter see­ing mul­ti­ple lo­cal gath­er­ings of peo­ple with­out masks.

“I was out of the coun­try. And it seems as though your ner­vous­ness of COVID has dis­ap­peared,” Row­ley said.

“You had me very, very con­cerned and I count­ed the days and I looked at the out­come and it ap­pears as though we can be a whole lot more in­ter­ac­tive with­out be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble. So it may be that the mask may come off very soon.”

The mask man­date will ef­fec­tive­ly be the fi­nal COVID-19 pub­lic health pro­to­col to be lift­ed, which would see life re­turn to as close to a pre-pan­dem­ic norm.

Yes­ter­day, the COVID-19 test­ing re­quire­ment to fly in­to the coun­try was al­so lift­ed.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Row­ley not­ed that the Care­nage Fish Fry fa­cil­i­ty was com­pa­ra­ble to the Oistins Fish Fry in Bar­ba­dos. He said the lo­cal fa­cil­i­ty has all the el­e­ments to make it a sim­i­lar tourism suc­cess.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the res­i­dents now had a du­ty to en­sure that this is not a place that be­comes run down, or an en­vi­ron­ment where crime is as­so­ci­at­ed with the lo­ca­tion. He said such neg­a­tive de­vel­op­ments will de­feat the pur­pose be­hind the es­tab­lish­ment of the fa­cil­i­ty.

He al­so called on the of­fi­cers of the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion to pa­trol the fa­cil­i­ty ex­ten­sive­ly.