Governor Silvestri 2020-04-03

Summary of Facebook Live Chat by Governor Silvestri at 2020-04-03 15:50

While the video says Español, it’s actually both. Skip to 22:50 for English.

It’s the governors birthday!

Note that it’s been re-ordered and some repetition collapsed.

Donations

Fund raising is for all the Bay Islands, not just Roatan

• Number might sound big, but it’ll go quickly as this is a huge crisis
• Expect August or September before we get tourists back.
• Please have patience as plans are being made on how to stretch this money out as far as possible.

Fundraising:

• Current total: USD 111,488.33; HNL 2,761,588
• USD 5,000; HNL 123,851 raised for Utila as well

PPE:

• Funds will be used for personal protective equipment for medical workers
• Sat down with medical centre yesterday and got their requirements for PPE
• Working on multiple angles on getting PPE

Ventilators:

• 4 home ventilators have arrived to the hospital, 2 more in private clinics, so 6 total
  • Vivo 65
• We also have a local inventor who’s trying to build them

Food

Governor talks about his own trip to the supermarket as it was his day to go today and he hasn’t been in a week. Managed to get 90% of what he was looking for and the places he went have good protective measures.

Deliveries:

• Federal government is working on a new process for deliveries
• Inspection of every business to ensure that they have the capacity to do delivery with biosecurity (masks, gloves, etc).
• Once it’s approved, there will be a company by company approval process

Curfew

Businesses such as hardware stores:

• Working on it
• Collecting documentation for exemptions to present to the mainland soon

COVID-19

Local hospitals and clinic preparation:

• Toured the hospital yesterday
• Very controlled, normal amount of people, well equipped
• Have a good supply of PPE to start with, asking for more
• Have 80 quarantines available now, 30 more in a mobile hospital on the way.

Handling COVID-19 infection:

• Inspired by South Korean approach
  • When someone infected, they search the persons phone for their last contacts and everyone goes to quarantine.
  • Please limit your contacts so that as few people as possible end up in quarantine

Mobile Hospital to Utila:

• Not planned to go to Utila
• Unfortunately, people will need to go to the mainland if they get sick and stay there until after the emergency is over

Hospital screening:

• Has a screening process for everyone entering the hospital.

Getting equipment:

• Mentioned that US states are outbidding each other
• Governor brought up that in some countries they’re using ponchos as they don’t have proper PPE. We’ll probably have to be similarly creative.

Contact info for off island tourists:

• Would like to be able to keep track of those who get COVID-19
• Haven’t gotten any contacts back on this
• We don’t have contact details for everyone
• For flights into Toronto, there’s no currently positive cases from Roatan

Rice University have ventilator plans online:

• Will look into it.
• http://oedk.rice.edu/apollobvm/

Transfer to Roatan from Utila for patients:

• Depends on symptoms, e.g. they don’t have an orthopaedic doctor so can’t treat a broken foot

Travel

Coming back to the islands:

• Information has been collected, total of 107 people whose primary residency is here and are trying to get back.
  • If you’re worried you’re not on this list, contact Miss Trish
• Spread over Cayman, Belize, USA, mainland Honduras. Most are on the mainland.

Ferry to La Ceiba:

• Suspended for now, looking into how we can get something going

Going to Roatan:

• Roatan isn’t open, but you can get back to Honduras
  • San Pedro Sula or Tegucigalpa: both of these have containment zones.

General

Coxen Hole:

• Know it was out of control today, it’s been difficult to convince people to stay at home.
• Looking for ways to describe to people why it’s so important to stay home
• In Peru, they’re putting people in stocks, not sure if that’ll come here
• Looking for ways to enforce staying at home here.

Please avoid insulting the governor and their team. They’re working to do what’s best for all the islands and that’s sometimes going to be really inconvenient for individuals. World wide crisis, so it’s hard on everyone. Their objective is to get everyone home, just not sure how long that’s going to take to do safely.

• As said ~10 days ago, make a 30 day plan.
• COVID-19 is an existential problem for the islands.

Rotary Meeting:

• First remote meeting.
  • Was done via Zoom.
  • I (Paul) recommend against using Zoom as it’s insecure and has a history of acting like malware, which is disturbing.

Canadians video:

• Canadians who made it back made a thank you video.