Jamaica’s main opposition People’s National Party (PNP) Tuesday reiterated its earlier call for the Jamaican government to re-introduce the mandate for face mask wearing to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic after the island registered 190 new cases on Monday.
Opposition spokesperson on Health and Wellness, Dr Morais Guy, said it is important for the government to re-introduce the mandate for face mask wearing in light of the current fifth wave of the Omicron BA-2 variant of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement, Dr. Guy said he felt compelled to renew his call because it has been more than a week since Prime Minister Andrew Holness promised to address the matter in light of the increase in cases and an upswing in the positivity rate.
Prime Minister Holness addressing the handover of two housing units on May 20 said reintroducing mandatory mask-wearing in public spaces “is going to be a requirement shortly for all of our citizens”.
He said then that Jamaica is in the endemic phase of the virus, meaning that it is becoming part of daily life and for the foreseeable future, the country will be experiencing recurrent bouts of increased infections.
“Thankfully, we are not seeing the infections and the illness translating, so far, into serious hospitalizations. We don’t want to go back to that situation [and] so again, I am urging all Jamaicans to act responsibly,” Holness said.
But the opposition PNP spokesman said despite the high numbers revealed in the latest report, Jamaica is still in the fifth wave of the outbreak and the peak period is yet to come.
“It is time to arrest the transmission by reintroducing measures such as mask wearing, which does not impede movement or impose any degree of infringement on people’s rights,” Guy said, noting that the Ministry of Education and Youth’s announcement to re-introduce mask-wearing in the classroom and school environment as a sensible move that must now be expanded throughout society.
He is also appealing to businesses, institutions, organizations, and the general public to maintain mask wearing to mitigate the current spread of the virus.
The Ministry of Health and Wellness said Jamaica has recorded 81 new recoveries bringing the total number of recoveries to 87,054. It said the positivity rate for the latest round of testing was 32.1 percent and there are 124 people hospitalized, two of them critically ill.
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