Prime Minister Gaston Browne announced Thursday that the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Antigua and Barbuda is now at seven.
The evidence is all but one of the cases were imported, Browne said in an address to the nation.
All seven individuals are now in isolation and the necessary contact tracing is being done, he said.
Browne said “as our COVID numbers increase, tracking every person with whom each of them was in contact, is close to impossible.
“That is why, throughout the world, all non-essential operations are closed, and personnel are working from home, where their jobs make that possible.”
The prime minister also defended his government’s decision to close the airport.
“We have tried for as long as we could to keep our borders opened, because we are acutely aware that many jobs and families’ livelihoods depend directly, and indirectly on tourism.
We instituted measures at the ports of entry to screen passengers for COVID-19 and we imposed measures to quarantine those persons with COVID type symptoms and isolated those who were detected as infected.”
He said after an elevation in the spread of COVID-19, including one known community transmission, “we have decided to close our borders … to all international flights from North America and Europe, where the virus is spiraling out of control.
Antigua-based LIAT and other sub-regional flights, which now are only moving between limited places within the region; private aircraft and cargo planes under a strict regime of health investigation and quarantine will be permitted to operate.
“Given the highly contagious nature of the virus, and the pattern elsewhere in the world, I expect that we will experience further community spread and contagion. That too is inescapable,” Browne said.
