NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The country will go into lockdown for the next two weekends as officials work through a “hybrid” lockdown strategy, according to Tourism Minister Dionisio D’Aguilar.
The Tourism minister confirmed health officials are not recommending a full lockdown for New Providence, which recorded 16 new cases yesterday.
“Right now the data as advised by the health professionals last night, we don’t need to go to a full lockdown (in New Providence),” he said.
D’Aguilar spoke to reporters outside Cabinet this morning.
The competent authority has not yet released orders stipulating the upcoming lockdowns.
The tourism minister noted the intense consternation of residents and visitors who were caught off guard by the decision to place the country into weekend lockdown at 7pm on Friday.
The lockdown order was released around 2pm that day.
“Another thing that the government is attempting to do, is as best as possible now give as much advance information as we can,” he said.
“So for example this weekend, we have a lockdown, that’s going to start Friday at 7pm and go to Tuesday at 5 because of the public holiday.
D’Aguilar continued: “The weekend after that we’re going to have another lockdown, Saturday and Sunday. But during the course of the week we’re going to allow commerce to continue and for people to as much as possible go about their ordinary lives, but shutting down at 7pm as opposed to 10pm.
“So these are right now as you look at the health professionals that are advising us, that in the rest of the Bahamas – Grand Bahama notwithstanding – we can have that hybrid of lockdown and not lockdown and we’ll see how that develops but if cases continue to grow exponentially outside of Grand Bahama then there will be another review at that time.”
Grand Bahama remains on a full lockdown until August 7 at 5am, according to the emergency orders.
Outside Cabinet, D’Aguilar said: “Of course GB continues to lockdown, and we are going to continue that lockdown until the numbers begin to flatten and then trend back down.”
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