COVID-19 monitoring czar: We will enforce rules at entertainment events

With most COVID-19 restrictions being lifted in the new emergency directives and parties being given the green light to resume, the head of the Government’s COVID-19 watchdog has made clear that the Ministry of Health will enforce health and safety for patrons and event organizers.

Head of the COVID-19 Monitoring Unit, Ronald Chapman, made the declaration as he took questions from members of the Barbados Association of Event Professionals (BAEP) and the Entertainment Association of Barbados (EAB) on Wednesday, during a special virtual meeting which sought to clarify Government’s new COVID-19 directives which state that social events totalling 150 people can resume but with select protocols in place.

Though several promoters expressed their confusion during the course of the meeting, with restaurants and hotels being allowed to currently host indoor events, while party events are being restricted and required to have patrons tested or fully vaccinated, Chapman said the methodology behind the different approaches were based on science and law, with no biases being used to influence decisions.

Chapman said: “When you are making a regulation, or you are making laws, those laws must be able in legal terms, be able to address the mischief. There is a specific mischief that is impending and the law must address that mischief. The mischief here is the spread of COVID – there are some event planners who would have breakfast parties, persons would come in and stay in their own bubble, listen to an entertainer, mingle a little bit and go home.

“The law must be able to deal with something like that, and it also must be able to deal with the full-on jump-up where you get 150 people behind a truck, everyone jumping up, laughing and shouting. The risk associated with that is much higher than persons sitting in a restaurant, being served by a waiter or waitress, or in a graduation where persons come in and sit down in a room, and everyone gets up and gets their thing and leaves.”

The new electronic vaccination certificate, intended to aid in the verification of vaccinated patrons, has already begun rolling out. But Chapman acknowledged that he could not give promoters a firm date to when all vaccinated people would receive the new certificates.

He said this was due to the postponement of talks between Ministry of Health officials and other civil servants caused by the preparations for impending Tropical Storm Elsa. But he assured them that a clearer timeline would be revealed before the end of the week.

Chapman outlined a number of concessions that would be offered to promoters to aid them in cutting the costs normally associated with putting on usual events.

But talks still have to be finalized before offering one particular concession – stages erected at certain venues by the National Cultural Foundation being provided free of cost or at a substantially reduced rate,

The COVID-19 monitoring chief said: “If you want to use that venue and utilize the stage already there, it significantly cuts your costs, and that was the conversation at the time. If you want to have an event somewhere else, send in the application and we would work with you, it does not have to be at one of the places where a stage has already been set up.

“Now the other question can be where these stages will be located, my answer to that is I do not know. The reason I do not know is that is something the entertainers would have to tell me that these are the places that they want to use. Let’s say a group of you decides to have a series of parties and we want to use the Botanical Gardens, the National Cultural Foundation at the meeting, said they would work with you in terms of erection of the stage, and that stage would stay there so that persons don’t have to look for money for an erection of a stage, which would drastically reduce your costs.”

He stressed that he and his team were determined to work stringently with event organizers to deliver safe and successful gatherings.

“I do not take this job very lightly, because I understand clearly that this is the livelihood of persons, people have bills to pay and a life to live, and it is important that us in the ministry, persons like myself who work for a government salary, respect that,” Chapman said. “My job is to facilitate you as much as I can within the law and to see as much as possible how we can get it done.

“We want to see how we can be able to get some events out there, get some persons out of the house, and get back to a little normalcy.”  (SB)