“We have to have a way to bring money into our economy, all tourism will die if we don't allow tourist to come back… the tourist businesses will die if we don't allow tourists to come back to the community.”

Territory must re-open to allow commerce – Dr Vanterpool

Dr Vanterpool was at the time speaking on the Thursday, October 29, 2020, special edition of the Honestly Speaking show where he also noted that some industries, including taxi services and medical services, will suffer should tourism not be revived.

“Even though I'm dealing mostly with the local people, eventually the local people will have no more money, eventually NHI can’t continue to support itself,” Dr Vanterpool remarked.

While there are now several conversations regarding what amount of COVID-19 risks the territory should allow with the re-opening of its economy, Dr Vanterpool said re-opening is something that must happen.

“We do have to allow commerce, we do have to allow people to come back in the territory and the truth is, the moment you do that, you're going to find cases of COVID coming back into this community,” he said.

Premier Andrew A. Fahie has warned that the territory has just 8 ventilators, therefore any re-opening measure of the territory will be stringent to prevent outbreaks and protect the VI community from the virus.

Open but keep infections to a minimum – Dr Vanterpool

“So, we have to do it in a way to try and keep it to a minimum or to keep it to a limit that we can tolerate and that we can handle,” Dr Vanterpool said.

While he admitted that the territory has not been hit hard thus far from the pandemic, he said the future is one with more where the territory will eventually get more COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Premier Andrew A. Fahie (R1) has warned that the territory has just 8 ventilators, therefore any re-opening measure of the territory will have to be stringent to prevent outbreaks and protect the VI community from the virus.