Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley is encouraging all Barbadians to cooperate with teams from the “Seek and Save” project, which will get started from tomorrow.
She said students from The University of West Indies would be going to every possible household to ask questions about the occupants’ health.
Ms. Mottley was addressing the nation before the start of the period of national pause, which runs from February 3 to 17.
The Prime Minister said the questions would include “Is your throat sore? Do you have a nosebleed? Your body hurting”, and added “if something is wrong, say it. [If] something is not right, shout it, because that’s the only way we are going to know to test you”.
She further stressed that it was important that Barbadians work with the “Seek and Save” team members when they were called upon.
“It makes it difficult to manage the population as we go through this pandemic. Those countries that have a high sense of compliance and discipline are the ones where people are not dying,” she stated.
Ms. Mottley disclosed that the target of 360 people to carry out the initiative had been surpassed.
“We now have over 400 persons who were trained by The University of the West Indies in the last few days to do the questions, and to be able to ask you the questions in your households. We only needed 360 initially, but those are the persons there for backup. We also have nine full teams, swabbing teams, but we are all in agreement that we would like to have some more people volunteer to be swabbers,” she said.
The Prime Minister appealed to persons who were in a position to swab to volunteer their services. She shared that 14 people had volunteered to assist, and urged other interested persons to call 535-5352, to help build the remaining teams.