The number of COVID-19 cases recorded since the beginning of the year has almost quadrupled, and the Minister of Health said that lawless residents are to blame.
At the same time, residents have levied their own claims to the effect that tourists have not had to quarantine while returning nationals are mandated to do so.
Many people are of the view that the rules unfairly discriminate against citizens of Antigua and Barbuda.
But Health Minister Sir Molwyn Joseph, while speaking on Observer AM yesterday, said that the evidence has proven otherwise.
“This is an issue that has lingered for too long in light of the evidence that we have. Let me be specific. The problem we are in now has to do with the residents of Antigua and Barbuda and citizens who return to Antigua during the Christmas season and they were quarantined, not isolated. They were asked to quarantine at home. There were over 1,500 of them and hardly anyone stayed home. They were up and about,” Joseph said.
“In terms of the visitors, they are required to restrict their movements and the evidence we have — and it has been the evidence since March through December — there has not been any significant transmission of the disease from the visitors, the tourists who come to Antigua and Barbuda and that’s a fact. We have the data,” he disclosed.
The Health Minister was also asked about complaints from some residents who say they have been left languishing in isolation without hearing from officials, and they have not been able to find out the results of their COVID tests.
“I’ve been hearing more of that question and I have asked my senior officers to investigate that. People in isolation should be hearing from the epidemiology unit and people should be tested and released if they are negative. So, I do not know the accuracy but I appreciate that that could very well be problem, and I’m glad that that is being brought to my attention so I’ll address that issue,” he responded.
Meanwhile, uncertainty over when the country will receive its next batch of vaccines is threatening to stymie the government’s target of inoculating 80,000 adults in 35 days.
To date, Antigua and Barbuda has received 40,000 doses of AstraZeneca from India and 5,000 from Dominica. It has in turn gifted 5,000 doses to Grenada.
So far, thousands of residents have received an initial shot of the jab, but questions linger over when an additional 40,000 doses due to come via the COVAX scheme will arrive due to high global demand.
Joseph told Observer that the government would find out on Monday when those doses – and crucially how many – are likely to come.
AstraZeneca is administered via two doses 12 weeks apart. If not enough are forthcoming from COVAX in time, the national rollout will have to be halted to enable those who have had a first shot get their second dose from current supplies.
Minister Joseph was asked if the COVAX arrangement does not transpire as hoped, if the government will remain on track to meet its target.
He said:” If the vaccine doesn’t come we cannot distribute the vaccine. The target has to be met with the vaccines here in Antigua.” — Observer Media
3 responses to “Sir Molwyn blames residents who came home for Christmas for community spread of COVID-19”
Residents, AKA black people. I guess only residents came home for Christmas. No tourists came here and no hotels had parties and no fetes on offshore islands. Just another house negro doing the bidding of the slave master, that’s what he is.
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Not wasting your time with this serpents…first was his boss and now all the little puppies make commotions. Their use the same stuff as the first book in the bible ( for their own I’ll gain ) …blame their own and you get through!!!!! Hope to see one of them in OXYGEN THERAPY and never coming out for that…in their agony this psicopats all the disgusting point fingers their uses against the own retarded population…(this is the way this psicopats see us) maybe their parents giving birth in mars or other planets,what kind of sicknesses WE the BURDO population can take and until when from this triators?
I find that Sir Molwyn’s explanation, if it’s not nonsense, then it’s ‘bullshit’. It pains my heart to hear the Government blame residents for the present state of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I am not blaming Sir Molwyn personally, I blame the present state of the COVI-19 pandemic in Antigua and Barbuda on an overall Government policy failure. From the beginning, the Government made a big mistake by believing that, in the face of a worldwide pandemic threat, our tourism industry could have continued as usual. All of the Caribbean’s Governments made the very same mistake, but the Antigua and Barbuda Government’s mistake was the most blatant. Why? Because, of all Caribbean countries and nations, Antigua and Barbuda was the most reliant on its tourism industry.
I am very sympathetic with PM Browne that when he made his bid to become this country’s leader he had no idea that a worldwide pandemic would hit Antigua and Barbuda’s population under his watch. But, I am most concerned, at this point, with how Mr. Browne’s Government responded to the crisis. Such a threat facing Antigua and Barbuda required sweeping changes in our social, economic and political existence as a Caribbean nation: and, what was the Government’s response? Reckless abandon: the Government simply “continued as though we were born in tourism, and must die in tourism”. Nothing changed. The Government’s response reflecting a “completely blank imagination” was hilariously pathetic. My! My!! I am ashamed!!!
But, how should the Government have responded to the COVID-19 threat? The fact of the matter is that the Government had absolutely no clue what to do. Gaston Browne never expected that he would be the one to manage Antigua and Barbuda in an unimaginable crisis. Poor fellow, he thought that he was inheriting a system of governance that was well buttressed by an economy well oiled by fortuitous funding coming out of a well established tourism industry that was painstakingly entrenched by his predecessor leaders: Dr. Sir Winston Baldwin Spencer; Sir Lester Bryant Bird, National Hero; Sir Vere Cornwall Bird, National Hero; Sir George Herbert Walter, National Hero; and, many unnamed others.
The moral of this story is that Government leadership is not the place for unimaginative, know nothing charlatans. So, today, we not only have within our borders, a health crisis of unimaginable national proportions, but also underlying national social, economic and political crises, that no one knows how they will end: there is no light at the end of this tunnel. May God have mercy on our souls, if not our lives. It is time to repent, and prepare, because we are silently and unconsciously weaned into the Great Beyond!!!