Barbados extends curfew for 2 weeks

Barbados: Barbados government has extended the curfew for the upcoming two weeks amid the spike in the Delta variant infection cases. Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley announced various restrictions in the COVID-19 health protocols, including an extended curfew which will come into effect from this Saturday onwards.

Starting from September 11, the curfew from Monday to Saturday would now run from 9 pm to 5 am and on Sunday from 6 pm to 5 am, the prime minister informed.

Despite this, the in-house dining at fast-food restaurants would be stop and team, and contact sports and hiking would be halted for the next two weeks. She also added that individuals would be subordinated to wearing a monitoring bracelet or having security guards and CCTV cameras outside their homes.

These restrictions came just after the Prime Minister announced that the country would not go under lockdown and emphasized that the decision has been taken as a precautionary measure to avoid the rise of cases, though the situation in the nation is not in a panic level.

PM Mottley asserted that “The nation is going to have to slow down a little bit. I assured this country on Tuesday we are not locking down, and the more I have gone on the ground, the more I know that we cannot lockdown because the people who will be affected by it are too many, and the numbers may be far more than what we may lose from COVID-19.”

PM Mottley stated the COVID-19 virus as a threat to the nations’ economy and people’s health, adding that the urgent need is to boost the vaccination drive, for which she also requested the residents to take their jabs of the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible.

“We need to boost these numbers urgently, and to boost these numbers, we have to extend the fight and get more people on board,” PM Mottley cited.