FOLLOWING an announcement by President Dr Irfaan Ali on Thursday that his government is exploring lifting the national curfew for COVID-19, the National COVID-19 Task Force, on Friday, announced the lifting of the curfew with immediate effect.

An advisory from the Task Force’s secretariat was published in the media with the signature of the Director of the Task Force’s secretariat, Colonel Nazrul Hussain.
“All swimming pools are permitted to operate at 50 per cent (sic) capacity. Swimmers must be fully vaccinated,” the advisory also read.

The advisory went on to ask Guyanese to demonstrate “responsible behaviour” and closed with best wishes to all for the upcoming Mashramani celebrations.
Previous COVID-19 regulations, signed by the head of the Central Board of Health (CBH), had established the national curfew at 00:00 hours to 4:00 hours.

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

President Ali said he had asked Prime Minister, Mark Phillips “to review with the stakeholder group our present curfew with an aim of removing the curfew as early as tomorrow.”
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.

The President said Guyana, 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 on Thursday.