COVID-19 measures: Businesses granted more time to get compliant – Health Minister

Over the past week, inspections conducted on businesses in both the public and private sectors found that many of them were not complying with the gazetted COVID-19 Emergency Measures. This was revealed by Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony during Wednesday’s COVID-19 update.
When asked to give some details on the inspections being carried out by the Health and Emergency Operation Centre (HEOC), the Health Minister said that while they have been going “quite well”, it was discovered that many businesses have not been in compliance with the measures.

As such, he said, officials have taken note of this, and have engaged business owners to point out the areas in which they have been lacking.
He said the National COVID-19 Task Force would be writing these businesses, giving them further time to “get themselves in order”.
The Health Minister disclosed that at least 52 businesses across the country were visited within the past week. The HCEO is conducting inspections to make sure that businesses are adhering to preventive measures such as physical or social distancing, handwashing/ sanitising, the use of face masks, and of course vaccination and asking for vaccination cards.
“We hope that we get more compliance. In addition to that, you would have noticed that, over the past week, a number of persons were arrested and prosecuted for violating these measures,” Dr Anthony added.
Noting that there are penalties for businesses violating the measures, Dr. Anthony said establishments are being given a chance to make sure they are complying, “rather than us imposing the penalties.”
“But if they don’t, they will leave us with no option but to enforce the penalty,” he warned. While Anthony did not disclose what exactly is the penalty, he said, “You’ll know them when we get there”.
Recently, the Health Minister appealed to local businesses to enforce the COVID-19 measures. In fact, he stressed that adherence to the measures is everyone’s responsibility.
“This thing is not about Government alone; this is about everybody working together to make sure all of us are safe. If we don’t do that, what we will end up with is that numbers will continue to increase and we will see more cases of hospitalisation and more cases of death,” he said.
“This is in our hands to control, but that control has to do with our behaviour and adherence to these measures. If we fail to do that, then the consequences are going to be the increase in cases, hospitalisation, and deaths; it’s self-evident, we have to really start waking up.”
He said, too, that while the Task Force would work to enforce measures, it is everyone’s responsibility to change their behaviour. “Because, for the Task Force to run behind every single person to see whether they are wearing a mask or not, that’s going to be quite a challenging endeavour,” he said.
Moreover, ranks of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) and the Guyana Police Force (GPF) have been conducting patrols countrywide to enforce the nationwide curfew from 22:30h to 04:00h.
The Police Force is urging all citizens to adhere to the COVID-19 regulations, and to report all breaches to the COVID-19 Task Force on hotlines 626-6674, 624-3067, 624-2819, and toll-free (GTT) 0180. (G1)