Curfew to be Lifted at Midnight

The existing curfew under the countrywide state of emergency expires at midnight, which means that on Friday morning, Belizeans will be free to move around the country.  It does not mean, however, that the country is being opened up once again because specific restrictions remain in place.  Businesses such as rum shops, bars and night clubs, will remain closed and persons wandering about aimlessly in the dead of night are still subject to being pulled over and questioned by police.  According to Attorney General Michael Peyrefitte, the Quarantine Authority will simply replace the state of emergency and the removal of the nightly curfew is the only new feature of a statutory instrument that goes into effect tonight at twelve o’clock.

Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General

“The state of emergency will come to an end at midnight tonight.  Now as I’ve said before, what’s critical about a state of emergency is that it is only in a state of emergency that you can have a curfew.  The oversight committee and cabinet decided that we should do away with the curfew at the end of the state of emergency which is midnight tonight, which means that tonight is the last night for the curfew.  When we wake up tomorrow morning we will no longer be in a curfew, so to put it more frankly, Friday night there will be no curfew, tomorrow night.  Tonight is the last night for the curfew, and what we have done since we will not be in a state of emergency then we don’t need for the Governor General to sign anymore regulations or another SOE.  All that is necessary is for the Minister of Health, under the Quarantine Authority, to issue quarantine regulations and these quarantine regulations will have everything that we currently have, right now at this moment, except for the curfew.  So whatever is the law now will be the law going forward, just without the curfew.  So still basically ten persons or less, social gathering, no gyms, no bars, no discotheques, no churches, no nothing like that because we have to make sure that we maintain the protocols that are necessary to fight COVID-19.  So that will be the situation going forward from here on.”

Michael Peyrefitte

Isani Cayetano

“So the fact that you’ve mentioned that all of these various activities, including nightlife and churchgoing, have been suspended is this indefinitely or is there a timeline that we’re looking at?”

Michael Peyrefitte

“Well this can be withdrawn by the minister at any time.  We didn’t really put any time limit on it per se.  Certainly as the prime minister has said before that we’re looking to open the airport on October first because in the current quarantine rules the borders remain closed.  In the current quarantine rules only certain categories of people can come into the country.  Come October first, when we open the airport then you don’t have to fit into any of these categories in order to enter into the country, you can just come, you can just come into the country as a tourist.  So we can safely say that these regulations will be in place until October first.”