Governor Silvestri 2020-05-19

Summary of Facebook Live Chat by Governor Silvestri at 2020-05-19 09:00

Starts at 01:30

The Spanish tramission can be found here

Tomorrow will again be early, 08:30 for Spanish and 09:00 for English

Reopening

Yesterday (Monday 2020-05-18) was the first day of opening internally.

• Bay Islands is the pilot project for Honduras
• Please remember biosecurity when going to restaurants
• Roatan hours: 06:00 - 20:00 for business, with people needing to be home by 21:00

Why Reopen:

• If don’t reopen, then businesses will continue to run out of money and fire people. They then won’t have money to eat.
• External reopening:
• Shutdown as don’t have infrastructure to face the virus
  • Buying time while we get equipment and setup process
  • Working closely with doctors

Travel and Repatriation

People entering Santos Guadiola illegally:

• Division between municipalities was closed, it is open for now
  • Be careful as the test results have not come back yet
• 03:00 a boat illegally came into Jonesville with 30 people aboard
  • Only 9 presented themselves
  • Captured 7
  • 14 still missing
  • Many of these people are related to Santos Guardiola local authorities
    • Not the mayor, who has been helping to clean up the mess
• No idea if the people are infected or not. Have tested everyone so far and will test anyone else captured.
• Agreement with mayor Gilbert
• Mayors office of Santos Guardiola has agreed to pay for the plane to send the test kits
• If this happens again, the municipality will close down
• If any test results come back positive, the reopening will be shut down and the Bay Islands will go into full lockdown
• There is a plan in the works to bring people back to the islands, there’s no need for this.
• Are taking legal action against those who came illegally
• RADAR didn’t detect them as it’s on the West side of the island

Issues with people coming illegally:

• This puts everyone in danger
• May stop the ability to reopen
• Important to help out authorities during the pandemic
• Remember, the constitution was suspended for the period of the pandemic
  • Anyone who does anything that could spread the virus has committed a crime which is punishable by 6 months to 2 years
  • The virus is that contagious, please take it seriously
• Have patience, there is a project to return people to the islands underway

Why was Roatan not shutdown when people came:

• Only two people, quickly tested

Spending the USD 200,000 donations to return islanders:

• This is a numbers problem
• Spending all of the money to help out the 200-300 people stuck on the mainland vs spending it to help the 100,000 people on the islands doesn’t make sense
• USD 200,000 doesn’t go far
• Have funded 3 projects:
• Treatment center
• USD 25,000 for helping those off the islands
• USD 15,000 for food and medicine for Guanaja
• USD 150,000 reserved for testing

Next weekend:

• Large project to return islanders from mainland
• Close collaboration with doctors, the project is conditional on their assent
• Will be a press conference run by the doctors coming shortly
• Process has been established, a hotel will be used to quarantine people and they will have to pay for meals (about USD 50).
  • The USD 25,000 set aside for those stuck outside the islands will be used to mitigate these costs.
  • Funding allocation will be decided by the commission
  • If you have the capacity to pay, please do so so that the donation money can be used for those who can not afford the expense
• Cost of getting people over is being covered by the islands

Absolute curfew during the repatriation project this weekend?

• Please wait for the press conference that’s specific to the repatriation

Seamen returning to Honduras:

• Honduras is allowing citizens to return
• This is not common in the Caribbean (Jamaica isn’t allowing them to return, for instance)

Immigration office:

• Didn’t open yesterday
• Waiting for authorisation for those who overstayed visa during crisis

Request for repatriation flight from Roatan to USA:

• We can discuss it
• No word yet on July flights

General

Funded Projects

• USD 25,000 used to help people stuck on mainland both to survive and to come back
• Guanaja project for food and medicine

Utila getting same help as Guanaja?

• Guanaja is in a much worse situation than any other place in the Bay Islands
• Oversight committee looked into their situation and decided to allocate some money for them
• Guanaja has twice the population of Utila

RECO:

• Looks like a problem with doing receipts this month, many bills are higher than possible
• Investigation is ongoing

Banking:

• Governor going to meeting with bank managers
• Some have been enforcing numbers this week, others not. Aim is to get all banks doing the same thing.

Ventilators:

• Currently have 2
• A project in the works to help this

Reach out to WHO for epidemiological study?

• They will look into it, like the idea

Limit to number of employees at work?

• Depends on how close they are

Bars:

• No bars permitted yet