The country’s Health Emergency Operation Centre (HEOC) recently visited over 50 businesses to ensure compliance with the COVID-19 emergency measures.
This was disclosed by Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony, during his daily COVID-19 update on Wednesday where he stated that many businesses have not been in compliance with the gazetted measures.
During the update, Dr Anthony noted that the HEOC over the past week has been conducting compliance checks and added that it has been going quite well as at least 52 businesses were inspected.
“…They are looking to see whether or not people are complying with the measures, many of the businesses have not been in compliance, they have noted this, they spoke to the business owners pointing out the deficiencies,” Anthony said while adding that the local authorities will formally write the businesses informing them of their non-compliance and will allow them some time to get themselves in order.
The measures with which they are expected to be in compliance with include social distancing, having sanitisation stations, and for some businesses ensuring that persons entering provide their vaccination cards. “Hopefully this would help us to improve the adherence to the measures because without people adhering to the measures we will have a more difficult time controlling the pandemic.”
The minister added that the HEOC exercise will continue and mentioned that apart from what has been happening centrally, members of the joint services have been going out to areas in the different regions and conducting similar exercises.
Dr Anthony cautioned that there will be penalties if these businesses do not comply with the measures and if they are found to be in breach of the measures even after being given some time to correctly implement them, those penalties will have to be enforced.
