COVERED IN AMERICAN NEWSPAPER: As Latin America and Caribbean seek to reopen economies, Jamaica offers cautionary tale

Monday, May 4, 2020

© Jean Marc Herve Abelard/Zuma Press/TNS April 25, 2020, Puerto
PrÃcNcipe, HaitÃ: Inhabitants stock up on food at the street market
of Petion-Ville, in the main commercial area of Port-au-Prince,
Haiti, 25 April 2020. The market looks crowded this Saturday
 despite constant recommendations from the authorities to
 maintain social distance to prevent the spread of the
coronavirus, which is still incipient in Haiti.

As Jamaica recorded a double-digit spike in new coronavirus cases in less than 24 hours last month, the government told the nation that there were indications that all who had fallen ill were linked to a call center in the parish of St. Catherine. Alorica, a major employer in the country’s lucrative Business Process Outsourcing call-center sector, had been allowed to remain open even as the island closed its borders to cruise ships and airline passengers and enforced an island-wide curfew for its 2.7 million inhabitants. Health and Wellness Minister Christopher Tufton said during an April 16 press briefing on the pandemic that 52 of Jamaica’s then-143 cases could be linked back to the St. Catherine-based call center, making it the largest cluster of COVID-19 infections on the island.

“The Alorica situation is the dominant challenge for us now in the country as it relates to COVID-19 and the response,” Tufton said at the time. “It represents for us, if you will, the weak link in the arsenal and the work that we’ve been doing.”

Unlike many countries in the region, Jamaica never fully shut down its economy amid the global pandemic, even as it aggressively enforced social distancing measures to prevent the spread of the virus. The decision has come with a steep price, and serves as a cautionary tale for others in the region that are starting to ease lockdowns and reopen their economies as cases and fatalities continue to climb. more