Again, Belize is not taking that drastic step at this time based on advice from regional health experts. But, the Prime Minister said he is under pressure even at home to enact a lock down - but conceded that there are too many dependent variables to do so:
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow - Prime Minister
"The time has not yet come for us to order any kind of mass shutdown. I know that there are some even in my own home who are trying to quarrel with me to say that everything should be shut down today. Well I beg to disagree, I don't think that's practical in any case, we need to approach that possibility carefully. There are practical reasons for that, forget for a moment the effect on tourism, which effect we're already experiencing, people are... if this things continue as the kind of pandemic that it is, we won't have to worry about shutting down the country, nobody will come. Already the tourism sector is screaming bloody murder and that's why I talked about the oversight committee getting together on Monday to explore possibilities of assistance in that regard but coming back to the practical aspect of things, there are people abroad, Belizeans abroad right now, if we had come here today and say we're banning all flights from coming in, what's going to happen to those people? Two of them I might mention are ministers of government, which might call some people to say ban the flights because we don't want them back but... On a serious note, there is no way we would have been prepared to come here today and to say bam, door slammed shut, this is the way we're going to go. So I am not trying to shelve responsibility, I repeat that ultimately it is a political decision. The good doctors can advise us as to the signs, as to the commonly agreed method of approaching this crisis and we clearly will want to be guided as much as possible by that. I repeat that in the final analysis, we would have to make the kind of decision that would see us actually officially impose a ban on mass gatherings, impose the travel restrictions. Again, we start talking about locking down, I have yet to find out what is the position in terms of our current store if you will, of vital necessities - food stuff. Do we have a 30 supply of medicine, a lot of our medicine as I understand it come from El Salvador, when they lock down I'm not sure if they are only talking about air travel. If they are sealing their borders completely, what happens to the medicine we normally get from them?"
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