COVID-19 Measures Amended to Accommodate Tourism Sector

Andre Perez

The new COVID-19 measures were amended over the weekend.  Two major changes were announced, the first being the time the curfew comes into effect. Initially, Minister of Health and Wellness Michel Chebat announced that the twenty-one-day curfew, which began on Saturday, would have started at nine p.m.  The curfew now starts at ten p.m.  There was also a change in the number of persons allowed to dine at an outdoor restaurant.  The initial number was ten, but after complaints were made, that number was increased to fifty percent of the restaurant’s seating capacity.  Minister of Blue Economy and Civil Aviation Andre Perez, who is the area representative for Belize Rural Central which includes Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker, two major tourist destinations, says that he came under fire for the new measures and after consulting with Tourism Minister Anthony Mahler the regulations were amended.

Andre Perez, Minister of Blue Economy and Civil Aviation

“I did come under heat for the new measures that we in place but I want to tell you that I was constant dialogue with the Minister of Tourism Honourable Anthony Mahler. We consulted and in view we discussed that the new measures being placed at nine o’clock was not really adequate for us and was not really working too good. We were able, him and I together to extend that hour from nine to ten o’clock and as well as to increase the people in the restaurant. We do understand. We in San Pedro were the first to be lockdown. We were the first to feel it back in March. I believe it was March twenty-third. So there is fatigue among our people. Economically we have been hit. I know that this month of December is certainly a month that we would want to make the most of it because we are all starving. We need to do business. We need to understand that and I understand it fully. So there was a little adjustment there. But we cannot move our eyes with this pandemic, my friends. It s very important.”