The territory will commence a 5 pm to a 5 am curfew commencing tomorrow, Wednesday, August 26.

“As a Cabinet, we debated long and hard on how to avoid a full lockdown, whilst ensuring the safety and protection of the people. These decisions have been driven by one motivation — to protect you and to protect the overall population of the territory,” he said during a live broadcast on Tuesday.

He continued: “Our strategy as a Cabinet throughout has been to put safety first — to be safe rather than sorry. We have to balance the need to keep people safe, to keep our economy going as much as possible and the need for essential services to operate.

We have had to make difficult decisions. And I know those decisions will affect people’s livelihoods, their income, businesses and way of life. We need to use this chance we have now to try to halt the virus, and that is why we are moving to restrict businesses to only absolutely essential areas.”

Restrict your movements!

The governor then urged residents to, as much as possible, restrict their movements to only acquire services that are essential.

“The safest thing you can do is to avoid contact with other people as much as possible,” he stated.

He further annouced that the public service will be closed to the public from 2 pm today. He said public officers will carry out their duties remotely, except for certain essential services.

Importantly, for the next seven days, only businesses that provide essential services will be open. All other businesses will be closed.

During that time, restrictions will also apply to the movement of vessels within territorial waters. All private and commercial vessels will be prohibited from travelling within the territorial waters with the exception of intra-island ferries and fisherfolk, where authorized.

There is no travel permitted to Anegada unless as approved. All other vessels should return to the dock, he said.