Annual festival will be scaled down – Health Minister

There will be no full-scale Crop Over experience this year as the annual festival is to be significantly scaled-down, Minister of Health and Wellness Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic announced Tuesday.

As he sat for the final episode of the Covid Queries advice programme on CBC Television, he said a mix of controlled in-person events and virtual activities are being explored.

Lt Col Bostic said: “I know that the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) have been doing a number of things to prepare for the Crop Over season. I’ve had some discussions with the CEO of the NCF, and there have been some entertainment entities that have been putting forward some proposals. Some of them in my mind have been very interesting, and the teams will be looking at all of those to see what can be allowed given the circumstances that confront the country at this point in time.

“As it is right now, I think that we are in a good enough place to be able to facilitate some activity. As to what that activity is going to look like, I cannot say at this point in time because I have to wait for recommendations to come from the Emergency Operations Centre of the Ministry of Health and Wellness. Suffice it to say, I can see a mixture of things happening in terms of virtual events where that is more desirable, and then some live and in-person events that can be controlled.”

But he stressed that any such public activities will only be given the green light if conditions are deemed safe for physical meetings to take place.

“This will be determined by the extent of the pandemic within the country at a particular point in time. As I said things are fairly good right now, quite good actually, but as we know this can change,” he added.

The health minister also disclosed that the national public health laboratory has now gained the resources to detect the growing range of coronavirus variants.

He said: “The Best-dos Santos Public Health Laboratory [has] been given some kits that give us the capacity to be able to do the first level of testing for all variants, and we have actually been able to put that into practice to a limited extent, especially with the UK variant, but we have had to send some of our equipment to be recalibrated to be able to make use of this provision. We are moving in that direction so that at least we would have an idea as to presence of other variants in this country.”

Lt Col Bostic insisted that Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and other agencies will be still used for some variant testing as a way to exercise the highest level of caution. (SB)