BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE Government of Antigua and Barbuda has written to their counterparts in the United Kingdom over the possible impact of the recently published statement, citing a possible new strain of the virus from the Caribbean territory, would have on its economy.
In a recent statement, Public Health England (PHE) suggested that two individuals who returned from Antigua and Barbuda came down positive with a new variant of the COVID-19 virus.
The High Commission in St. John’s doubled down on the statement, indicating in a press statement that the media misrepresented the Public Health England statement, noting that the media reporting was “inaccurate”.
In a statement written to Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne explained that his territory’s effort to create a safe environment for the vital tourism sector has been hampered by the recent statement issued by PHE.
“Our efforts to create a safe environment, in which our vital tourism industry could maintain confidence, was dealt a grave blow by Public Health England (PHE) which, on March 11th, posted a notice on its website wrongly claiming that ‘an Antigua variant’ of the Coronavirus had been in the UK,” explained Browne.
He noted that the statement was picked up by the international media and has resulted in the cancellation of the booking “setting back our economy even more”.
The Prime Minister explained that the territory has already inoculated 20 percent of its population using 40,000 doses that were obtained from the Government of India.
Despite that, he acknowledged that the tourism-dependent territory has been badly affected by the economic consequences of the pandemic and effectively implemented a number of measures to combat the spread of the virus.
With the statement now issued and gone viral, PM Browne informed the British PM that “we must now redouble our efforts and will be forced to borrow more money in order to recover the ground that PHE’s action has cost us”.
Now that the damage is already done, PM Browne suggested that the “British Government should urgently consider recompensing Antigua and Barbuda for the damage that one of its principal agencies has done to our economy and the welfare of our people”.
Against that backdrop, he said: “We believe appropriate recompense would be a donation to Antigua and Barbuda from Britain of what would be to your economy and resources of a small quantity - 100,000 doses of the AstraZeneca Vaccines.”
