And for the hundreds of officers charged with patrolling the border and intercepting jumpers, COVID-19 is a massive occupational hazard. That's because the highly contagious disease has the potential to decimate an active police force leaving the internal security of the nation in the balance. After all, 14 officers had to be placed on quarantine in Corozal when a woman constable tested positive, and today, 20 officers in that formation got swabbed. We'll wait and see what the results are.
They could translate into a nightmare for the Commissioner, but it's a very real occupational risk in this very difficult kind of frontline work. The commissioner told us today he's at pains to avoid that risk:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"We are still trying to establish how the first police officer got it, because we have to start from there. We know that the other 2 who were tested positive yesterday they got it from her. So the issue is how did she get it. Again, we have to understand that we are a police department, we interact with people a lot and especially here in the north the police officers come into contact with border jumpers almost on a daily basis and so there is a high risk that they can contract the virus and so we are still trying to ascertain exactly how the first officer got the virus."
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