People need time to adjust, says Panton

(CNS): Premier Wayne Panton has said the community needs time to adjust to the idea of living with COVID-19 after many people reacted with shock and fear when Cayman’s coronavirus-free bubble burst some 12 days ago. He said the pause in reopening would allow the government time to build up public confidence that the country can manage the return of the virus and not see any significant surges or high levels of sickness.

While government leaders have often said the phased reopening would see COVID return, it still came as a surprise, coming sooner than expected. Speaking at Friday’s press briefing, Panton said the resulting pause is not indefinite and the border could still reopen before the end of the year, but whatever day is set, the country needs to be in the best possible place regarding the vaccine and public must be comfortable with the virus being among us.

The reaction by some to the return of COVID and the response by others to the decision to delay reopening is polarizing the country, but the premier is seeking to use this outbreak and pause to the border reopening plan to build up the confidence that is clearly missing after Cayman has lived for more than a year with no local transmission, a rare situation around the world.

“This pause gives us an opportunity to strengthen some of our controls so that we reduce the likelihood of a surge of COVID-19 cases that puts lives and all commerce at risk,” Panton said on Friday, adding that this would give government a better sense of the way forward and the people time to come to grips with the virus return.

He said the government also wants to test the resilience of institutions to the current outbreaks and to focus on containing and managing it and seeing how it affects local children.

Panton was clear on Friday that government will not lift any quarantine restrictions, as previously planned on 14 October. This could happen sooner than the end of the year but a date was difficult to pin down until the impact of the current outbreaks have time to play out.

“We are looking to pause for as much as to the end of the year but we have to have the flexibility,” he said, explaining that it depends on how confident we can be about lifting quarantine because everyone now accepts we must reopen.

The premier said he was reassured that most people who have become positive from community transmission remain asymptomatic or are suffering only mild symptoms.

But he said he was aware that the reaction to the outbreak was driven by emotion, which is why he believes the country needs a little more time to adapt and get used to the idea of living with the virus before the government moves to Phase 4 of the reopening plan.

“We need time for society to adjust and to make sure we understand what was involved with this current outbreak,” Panton said. “We still don’t know how it happened and no evidence… it happened because of a traveller, so we are still looking around for the possible… sources of this… We have been in this cocoon for 18 months,” he noted, adding that coming out of it has created a level of shock that government could not ignore.

Panton explained that before we relax controls further, government wanted to see how the vaccines, public health experiences, the strategic planning, continuity of operations, school bubbles and people in general react and work together to prevent a surge of cases.

“We have all known that COVID-19 would reach our shores and enter our community. We all knew, both those who believe we need to open the border and learn to live with COVID-19 and those who believe otherwise,” he said, adding that with the virus already here, the government has no intention of implementing a mandated lockdown but was keen to have an organised managed response.

“I believe we can get through this if we all do what we are supposed to do,” he said as he outlined the well-worn COVID protocols of masks, distance and sanitizer, plus the vaccine. “This pandemic requires us to balance the economy and the society, and we are as far as possible putting our people first in these circumstances.”

He said PACT was in unanimous agreement about the values that will guide the decision-making but there was no “playbook for COVID-19. We need to stick together as a community and adapt as circumstances change,” the premier said.

Opening was always going to see the virus return, but combing “our collective efforts we can get through this” and open the borders without going back to lockdown. He warned it will always be impossible to eliminate the risk but the aim was to manage the risk in the community with confidence.

See the full conference below on CIGTV: