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And, while the island is quiet as a selling army today, it was frantic yesterday as people rushed to try and get off. Some, for economic reasons - because their accommodation arrangements had expired, or others, because of the COVID panic.  

But, how it played out, with San Pedranos needing to get home, stranded in the city, and Caye Caulker passengers blamelessly caught up in the middle, and police stopping then from docking in the city….well, all that was a whole big mess.  And un unnecessary one.  

Today, Doug Singh, who sits on the National Oversight Committee - and owns a resort on Caye Caulker told us that how it went down left a lot to be desired:

Dough Singh - Member of COVID 19, Nat'l Task Force
"The only reason I say it’s unfortunate is that a set of circumstances that lead to this point becomes unfortunate. I was in the task force meeting yesterday with the Prime Minister when the decision was made to quarantine San Pedro. That was clear. The instructions that went out were clear. I saw the news article last night with the gentleman, in the implementation to manage a decision that was made I think a lot of mistakes got made. To begin with, the pandemonium started as a result of quarantining San Pedro. It’s not San Pedro anybody on any of the Islands who wanted to get out or any of the Islands reacted. The procedure that I understand that has been put in place is that they have restricted the movement of vessels to and from San Pedro no matter where it’s coming from whether it’s Mexico, Corozal, or Belize City. So that is where the control is what they have done in the process is any vessels coming in from San Pedro they are screening and doing certain things, I think they’ve restricted the boarding to the Brown Sugar terminal which is what they’re doing. That is from San Pedro. There is absolutely no guidelines or restrictions provided for Caye Caulker so movements should not be inhibited from Caye Caulker. There’s good intent in what is being done but I’m not so sure that in a way that has not inconvenienced a tremendous amount of people unnecessarily if it was done differently, I'm sure that some of this could have been avoided and people who want to get back home to Caye Caulker and any other island through the terminals can do so. They're unintended consequences; I suppose is what I'm saying."