ROSE­MARIE SANT

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says gov­ern­ment will have no hes­i­ta­tion in re­turn­ing to the mask man­date if the sit­u­a­tion with the spread of COVID 19 war­rants it, and he is en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue wear­ing masks, al­though the of­fi­cial man­date to wear masks was lift­ed on Sun­day.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence Dr Row­ley said he is aware that while the an­nounce­ment that the mask man­date had end­ed brought men­tal, phys­i­cal, and psy­cho­log­i­cal re­lief, and peo­ple may want to be­lieve that COVID is be­hind us, “noth­ing is fur­ther from the truth.”

Dr Row­ley cau­tioned that the virus is still around, con­tin­ues to mu­tate, and re­mains “dan­ger­ous.”

He urged the pop­u­la­tion not to take the po­si­tion that “the pan­dem­ic is over and we can go back to nor­mal”.

The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that the BA.4 and BA.5 vari­ants con­tin­ue to pose sig­nif­i­cant threats. In fact, he de­scribed the BA.5 vari­ant as still a pub­lic health is­sue that is caus­ing prob­lems akin to Delta, while be­ing as vir­u­lent as Omi­cron.

Dr Row­ley not­ed that the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) is ad­vis­ing that coun­tries should re­main masked. He urged the pop­u­la­tion to re­main “ex­treme­ly cau­tious and ob­ser­vant”, stat­ing that the gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter urged the pop­u­la­tion to co­op­er­ate and be sen­si­ble, and to wear masks to pro­tect them­selves even though the man­date has been lift­ed.