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