The following statement was issued this evening by Premier, the Hon. David Burt, JP, MP: “I must first thank everyone in the Ministry of Health for their outstanding work. They have worked long hours and weekends for many months now. As a country, we owe them our sincere appreciation.
“The Government is concerned about the increase in the number of confirmed cases of people with the coronavirus, that is the reason that we took the actions announced last night.
“Bermuda has the testing capacity that far exceeds other countries on a per capita basis. The fact that we are catching so many cases is unfortunate, but I am grateful to our teams who have built out our testing infrastructure to enable us to test and isolate cases so they do not infect others.
“In the coming days, I expect the number of confirmed cases to increase; such is the scale of this outbreak linked to a few super-spreading events. I ask all persons to cooperate with contact tracers and get tested if you have been contacted or may be at risk of exposure.
“Soldiers from the Royal Bermuda Regiment will be supplementing the efforts of the Health team to facilitate even more wide-scale screening for the coronavirus including at our schools and other essential services.
“The most important thing for all residents at this time is to work together to stop the spread of the virus by obeying the rules that have been laid out by the Government. These simple measures will help us reduce the spread.”
The Premier concluded, “At my press conference tomorrow I will be outlining further steps the Government is taking and also how affected persons and businesses can apply for assistance. Some of the measures that may be imposed are preventative in nature and while they may not be immediately related to current clusters, they will be designed to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens and to likewise minimize the risk of further spread.
“This setback in our COVID battle is unfortunate, however, I have confidence in the people of Bermuda supporting our teams at the Ministry of Health in our collective effort to contain this outbreak in advance of the Christmas Holiday.”