This must happen first before Jamaicans can re-enter the country – Prime Minister Holness

This Prime Minister Andrew Holness said is necessary to curtail the spread of the coronavirus on the island, understandably with majority of confirmed cases being imported.  To date the country has 63 confirmed COVID-19 cases, four deaths and nine recoveries since announcing its first case on March 10.

However, with increasing calls by those Jamaicans – many on overseas work programmes – for the government to relax its rule and allow them to return home, several mitigating factors will have to be addressed first.

Speaking at a digital media briefing this afternoon from Jamaica House, Prime Minister Andrew Holness outlined the gravity of the situation to facilitate the return of those Jamaicans desperate to get back in the country.

“We recognise that we cannot keep our borders closed indefinitely. However, we cannot put our population at risk of the spread as a result of additional imported cases,” he said.

At present the country’s COVID-19 readiness is being rigorously tested with approximately 7,500 nationals who returned home during March 18-23 prior to the country shutting its borders. Of that number 4,507 persons have made formal contact with COVID-19 contact centre, to verify their health status and whereabouts, the prime minister disclosed. But of greater concern to the government and health officials on the frontline of this COVID-19 fight are the more than 1,000 individuals who are yet to self-identify.

“In a sense, opening up the borders again depends on how well we can get totally under control this unknown population that came in and how they are keeping faithful to the quarantine requirements and reporting. We need to understand their health status before we take in new populations which would stretch the resources,” said the prime minister.

To accept more overseas-based Jamaicans at this time will require training of more health personnel to undertake testing and monitoring of every individual among the additional batch of new arrivals in the country. Plus there is a caveat for every person coming in: mandatory quarantine at a state facility for a minimum of 14 days.

“We have, however, considered certain protocols by which we would start to allow re-entry. Those protocols will entail state quarantine. For that to happen we need to establish the rooms. We do have some rooms available but it is certainly not enough, and we are trying to expand on that very rapidly,” he said, before admitting that it is one of the toughest decisions he has to make given the arguments made for and against re-entry of Jamaicans.

“All of that requires a massive logistic operation that I have asked the Minister of National Security and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade to pull together that kind of logistic co-ordination and give it ministerial oversight,” he added. “Hopefully by the next press briefing we will be able to say something definitive as to where we are with making provisions for the controlled re-entry of Jamaicans.

“And let me make it clear from now that it cannot be a wholesale re-entry. We are not at that stage of the epidemic.”