PRESIDENT of the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association (JMDA) Dr Mindi Fitz-Henley has proposed that the categories of people on the Government’s exemption list for no-movement days be narrowed for the next period, which begins this Sunday.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness last Thursday announced seven no-movement days, the first three of which ran from Sunday, August 22 to Tuesday, August 24. The remaining four of those days will run from this Sunday, August 29 to Tuesday, August 31, and on Sunday, September 5.

This measure, the prime minister said, would give the Ministry of Health two periods of no movement that will effectively break the transition of the virus. The Administration subsequently announced the list of people exempt from the no-movement days, including Members of Parliament, councillors, judges, health-care sector workers, people working in the oil and gas industry, and farmers. People travelling to and from vaccination sites were also exempt, while exceptions were also made for workers in the tourism sector and individuals journeying to and from hotels, including those entering and departing the island, as well as those transporting them.

But, according to Dr Fitz-Henley, the initial list which saw 52 categories being allowed to move around on the days in question were so wide that it created loops for other individuals to go about their business, defeating, in a sense, the purpose of the lockdown.

“For us as health-care workers these no-movement days don’t apply to us; we are all at work, but it’s interesting to us to see how many people were still on the road and these are not people who were at the National Arena (official vaccination site) or the other sites to be vaccinated. They were just on the road, going to pick up food and still going about their business, and these are people who did not fall under the exemption categories. It does seem the exemption list was too wide,” the JMDA president said.

Asked whether the JMDA believes that the list should be narrowed when the remainder of the measure kicks in, she said, “I think so, because based on what we are seeing there are a lot of people on the road that don’t need to be; we still have workplace clusters and you want to avoid clustering and having people being together like that.”

She added, “We understand health-care workers need to be out, police personnel need to be out, and some bus drivers, but it is difficult [for the lockdown measure to work when] so many people [are] on the road.”

As of yesterday the health ministry reported 367 newly confirmed cases of the virus, pushing the overall tally for the island since last March to 63, 831. It said there were 14 additional deaths between August 21 and 23, making the fatalities so far 1, 431.