Public’s Cooperation Needed to Battle COVID-19

Dean Barrow

To defeat the COVID-19 Prime Minister Dean Barrow says that the public’s full cooperation is needed. Doctor Marvin Manzanero’s team will be boosted by health professionals from the private sector while Prime Minister Dean Barrow is asking Belizeans to be confident in the health professional as the battle against COVID-19 just begins. PM Barrow pledges that the government will continue to operate transparently with the public.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“The core team headed by Doctor Manzanero is under severe pressure and there is a need to provide assistance to them. These private sector if you will healthcare personnel that we have now drafted are prepared to assist not just in terms of strategizing because in order to defeat this deadly enemy there has to be a great deal of planning, there has to be a great deal of coordination, there has to be a great deal of analysis, there has to be a great deal of processing of the empirical evidence that we have in fact gathered from the experience of other countries. So these private sector health personnel will be tasked now to assist with strategizing, with mapping out our battle plans but also they are prepared to operate as well in a hands-on capacity. Bottom line is that we are preparing for and resolve to defeat the enemy.   There is not any need to allow our fears to run away with us. Of course we are all worried, we are all scared but we need to know that indeed with the extra assistance that our perhaps overworked health teams is getting we feel that we can lick this thing. Naturally it requires the cooperation of the public. We have all along been trying to operate with you with members of the public in a transparent a fashion as possible. If there have been little gaps and omissions and mistakes well that is regrettable but there has never been and will not ever be any kind of bad faith on the part f the authorities. Certainly is my job, my duty to ensure that that does not happen and in fact it does and it is not just a question of a mere slippage, if indeed there is any deliberate act of that nature I will deal with it.”