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Premier Hon. Wayne Panton issued a video message this evening addressing the early mid-term break closure of Government schools in an effort to both mitigate the absence of several secondary-level teachers due to mandatory quarantine requirements and curtail the transmission of the virus within the local school community.

He said, “The Cayman Islands’ approach of protecting our people first, from day one, has been different. And while many along the way have criticised our approach, and predicted that it would not be successful, today we find ourselves on the brink of 80% of our population receiving at least one dose of the vaccine. While we are now once again experiencing community transmission, our hospitals, and critical care units have not been overwhelmed. We have taken the first and most important steps to living with COVID-19 and that is ensuring our people and healthcare system can continue to stand.”

Premier Panton called the recent cases of community transmission “a very useful test of our systems.”

He explained, “It has allowed us to clearly measure our level of preparedness, testing and response systems. And there are many lessons that have been learned, which we will continue to adapt. As a community we must learn to live with COVID safely by managing the key risk factors such as our vaccination rate, local transmission rate, as well as the capacity of our Public Health Services.”

The full message can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/T1RYokctnaw

(GIS)