Cayman now has eight new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, COVID-19. This brings the island’s total number of cases to 53.

The revelation was made at the daily press briefing by the Chief Medical Officer, Dr John Lee. “Please don’t let all the hard work be eroded. You need to follow all the measures put in place. We think it is hard now, wait till we can’t control what is happening out there,” said the Minister of Health Dwayne Seymour.

“If this intensifies, at the rate that it is going, with the community spread, we will have no choice but to do a full lockdown, for more than just one day, so I am begging you please take heed,” added Seymour.

Premier Alden McLaughlin said it was worrying that people were deliberately breaching the soft curfew measures. “Most people are responding to the curfew. It is worrying that people are deliberately breaching the soft curfew and indeed the reports that I got myself about the number of people, and the way people were congregating, along, particularly, the Seven Mile Beach yesterday, is hugely worrying. It may take as much as two weeks for us to understand what the impact of that would have been on the community, ” said McLaughlin.

“Those sorts of engagements are what cause massive community spread of the virus, you just don’t know, none of us know who may have the virus, that are at present asymptomatic,” added McLaughlin.

McLaughlin further noted that he was working on closing the beaches for Easter Monday, in light of the situation at the beach on Good Friday.