Most of the pop­u­la­tion turned to their tele­vi­sions on Sat­ur­day with a sense of un­ease as they wait­ed for the Prime Min­is­ter to ad­dress the coun­try on new lock­down mea­sures to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

It was wide­ly be­lieved that Dr Kei­th Row­ley would be an­nounc­ing stricter lock­down mea­sures. But dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, Row­ley said there was no sci­en­tif­ic da­ta to sug­gest any more mea­sures should be im­ple­ment­ed at this time.

He said the sys­tem which has seen re­stric­tions for pub­lic gath­er­ings, the ces­sa­tion of in-house din­ing and the clo­sure of beach­es and rivers, among oth­er mea­sures, is work­ing. Those mea­sures were put in­to ef­fect for a 28-day pe­ri­od on Au­gust 17. Row­ley said they will con­tin­ue for the re­main­ing 14 days of the orig­i­nal 28-day time-frame.

“I’ve been hear­ing that many peo­ple ex­pect us to make sig­nif­i­cant ad­just­ments, I want to tell you that there is no sci­en­tif­ic da­ta which re­quires us to make any more dras­tic arrange­ments,” Row­ley said.

He warned the pop­u­la­tion not to give in to mis­in­for­ma­tion and to fol­low the pub­lic health guide­lines.

“I sim­ply want to say to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty: Our sys­tem is work­ing and we should not al­low mis­in­for­ma­tion, pan­ic or un­rea­son­able con­duct to al­low us to be un­able to co­ex­ist with a virus that is be­com­ing bet­ter and bet­ter known.”

He said the bat­tle was now about bal­anc­ing life and liveli­hoods.

He slammed those who con­tin­ue to flout the guide­lines, say­ing he had re­cent­ly been in­vit­ed to a par­ty.

“I my­self got an in­vi­ta­tion to a par­ty, if you come ear­ly it's $50 and a lot of nice girls and if you come late it's $100. I passed that to the po­lice and I hope the po­lice would have at­tend­ed that par­ty and lock up every­body who was there be­cause I am just fed up of peo­ple play­ing the fool when we are talk­ing about lives and liveli­hoods, those who have to par­ty, then we have to po­lice them,” he said.

“I know it makes news to re­port that some­body in a work­place has test­ed pos­i­tive but we can’t re­al­ly go on pan­ic liv­ing be­cause some­body hears that some­body had COVID be­cause we are do­ing two things, there is life and there is liveli­hood. We are try­ing to pre­serve life by all the things we are do­ing to pre­vent the spread of the virus but in par­al­lel, with a man­aged com­po­nent of risk, we are keep­ing liveli­hoods go­ing.”

He said busi­ness­es should not be shut down “as a fash­ion” but on­ly when it is re­quired by the pub­lic health guide­lines.

Row­ley said the pub­lic ser­vice will op­er­ate at 50 per cent with staff be­ing phys­i­cal­ly present on a ro­ta­tion sys­tem. He said this was be­ing done so that in the event one mem­ber of staff from any ro­ta­tion tests pos­i­tive and there is a risk of that per­son in­fect­ing their co-work­ers, there will be staff to re­place them. He warned pub­lic ser­vice em­ploy­ees though that they would be re­quired to work from home and will not be on va­ca­tion.

He said maxi taxis will be al­lowed to op­er­ate at 65 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, while taxis are now al­lowed to car­ry one pas­sen­ger per win­dow as they ply their trades.

Lat­est COVID sta­tis­tics

As of 6 pm yes­ter­day, there were 962 ac­tive cas­es of COVID-19, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of pos­i­tive cas­es to 1,645.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health’s dai­ly 10 am up­date, 23 more peo­ple test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus- from sam­ples tak­en from Au­gust 21 to 28.

In the 6 pm up­date, 68 more cas­es were an­nounced, this time from sam­ples tak­en from the pe­ri­od Au­gust 23 to Au­gust 29.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Sat­ur­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said there were six peo­ple in the In­ten­sive Care Unit at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and ten peo­ple in the High De­pen­den­cy Unit at Cou­va.

Paras­ram said the num­ber of peo­ple dis­charged–which now stands at 664–refers to those who have re­cov­ered from the virus.

He said “re­cov­ered” and “dis­charged” are used in­ter­change­ably in the Min­istry’s re­leas­es.