–but President reinforces importance of care, caution among locals

GUYANESE could see the current nationwide curfew being lifted as early as today, according to President Dr. Irfaan Ali, who has already commenced talks about this move with Prime Minister, Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips, who is Head of the National COVID-19 Task Force.

Delivering remarks at the launch of the 2022 Explore Guyana Magazine, on Thursday, the President said: “We cannot continue with the prolonged curfew.”

Guyana currently has a national curfew that runs from 00:00 hours to 04:00 hours daily, which forms part of a menu of measures implemented to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

“About 1:00 am this morning, I had a conversation with the Prime Minister and I asked him to review with the stakeholder group our present curfew with an aim of removing the curfew as early as tomorrow,” President Ali said.

Dr. Ali noted that there needs to be an evolution in dealing with the pandemic, and pointed out that the curfew might not be as useful, given that some studies have cited lockdown as having little effect in helping to fight the spread of the virus.

“What is needed in this stage of dealing with the pandemic, is ensuring all the agencies have sanitation devices and ensuring we continue to educate on the vaccination programmes, and ensuring that the guidelines and protocols are observed. But for sure we can’t continue with the prolonged curfew,” Dr. Ali said.

He reiterated: “It is my hope and intention that that curfew be removed, once the necessary steps are followed, as early as tomorrow.”

The President said that this country, like many countries the world over, is recovering from a very difficult two-year period.

The tourism sector in, particular, had been hard-hit because of extreme lockdowns and travel restrictions that were implemented by most countries in early 2020.

President Ali commented that through collaboration between stakeholders, the country has been able to weather the storm.

“We have to celebrate, in some sense, our multi-stakeholder approach to resolving the shock or ensuring the entire shock was not passed over by creating that balance, and I think we have done exceedingly well in creating that balance,” he said.