Czar ‘pleased’ with shopping day, ‘worried’ about traffic

Despite yesterday’s long lines at supermarkets and post offices, COVID-19 Czar Richard Carter said he was generally satisfied with the start of limited shopping this Holy Week.

But the Czar said an “explosion” of vehicles on the roads still caused concern.

Carter made the comments to Barbados TODAY this morning, as the second day of the reopening of supermarkets began, to allow curbside pickups and deliveries and post offices to allow pensioners to cash cheques.

While he acknowledged that there had been long lines, he said this showed people were adhering to the social distancing guidelines.

Carter explained: “The long lines that we saw at the post office did not necessarily mean that social distancing wasn’t involved. I visited a number of post offices myself and generally speaking, the people were maintaining the appropriate distance between one another, which is one of the reasons why the lines were very long.

“So if you have 50 people who are six feet apart that’s going to take up 300 feet, which is 100 yards. If you have 50 people who are bunched close together they could be actually within ten yards, so the long lines weren’t necessarily an indication that people weren’t complying because a number of police officers were present at most of the post offices and persons were generally complying with the physical distancing.

“At the supermarkets, there were [fewer] problems as well because those were available only for curbside pickups or for pickup of packages and therefore we didn’t see any significant bunching at the supermarkets. The minimarts themselves were also observing the physical distancing but on the outside. I think the optics of it looks bad because you have very, very long lines but the long lines are an indication that people are spacing themselves out.”

Carter did acknowledge that some improvements would have to be made to prevent elderly people from waiting in lines for extended periods.

As they are an at-risk group, special accommodations might have to be made for them, he said.

He told Barbados TODAY: “We have solved one problem but perhaps in some respects created another in the sense that many of the people who were in the long lines for the post offices were elderly persons and had to wait for a very long time and that is obviously undesirable.

“You don’t want elderly persons standing in the sun for long periods because that creates other potential health problems like dehydration and all of the other things. So it is an issue of concern and I believe that it has been addressed to some degree by having additional staff at the post offices to help increase the pace at which persons can cash their cheques.”

But the anti-virus Czar said the high volume of traffic seen on the roads was not directly related to yesterday’s activities.

He contended that many people used the opportunity to drive around, even though the 24-hour curfew was still in effect.

He said: “What I was less satisfied with was the explosion of vehicles on the road and the number of people who were out and about. It seems as though a number of people took the opportunity of the reopening of supermarkets, albeit just for curbside pickup or for collecting pre-ordered packages, to go back on the road.

“The vehicular traffic and the number of people leaving home was definitely much greater than we had seen in previous days and the conditions under which persons were allowed to leave home did not change.

“You should only have been leaving home to conduct urgent medical business, if you are going to fill up with gas or get a topup at the gas station, or if you are going to collect food, and for food it would have just to do a pickup. The traffic that we saw on the road yesterday was not consistent with what you would expect for persons doing one of the four of those things.” randybennett@barbadostoday.bb