The Tribune

By Malcolm Strachan

THERE is no doubt our initial success in warding off COVID-19 was merely a test run. Indeed, we are in the thick of things as we may have overestimated our ability to open the country with cases surging in the United States. Since July 1, coronavirus cases here have soared well above 800, when, in the previous three-plus months, we barely cracked 100 cases. While there has been no shortage of blame, we are still struggling to pull together as one and bring about solutions that will keep our citizens safe.

Of our 800-plus confirmed cases, there have been multiple healthcare workers on the frontlines who have caught the virus. Notwithstanding the nature of their jobs places them in a vulnerable position, healthcare workers have been sounding the alarm that they are continuously left in precarious situations without adequate PPE being supplied by the Public Hospitals Authority (PHA).

For their part, the PHA has taken up a position of defence, thwarting claims by healthcare workers that they aren’t well resourced.

Despite bells being rung by the nurses’ union head, Amancha Williams, and others within the belly of the beast, the PHA insists such claims are “false and malicious”.

In a statement this past week, Williams - no stranger to contention with the government over labour relations - called on the Prime Minister to do more.

“The Prime Minister better do something before the whole country shuts down and you have no nurses [anywhere]. I can’t stop them,” Williams said.

“He needs to do something: give them what you promised them; sort them out, provide them with the equipment that they need to work with when they[’re] dealing with these types of (COVID-19 )patients.

“He has to do what he has to do. We’re tired of going into these meetings. We went into a meeting yesterday with them and they’re just talking. He doesn’t want to listen to [anything]. He just wants to talk what he wants to talk.”

Certainly, union heads are no strangers to adding a little colour when speaking publicly. However, anyone who has spent any time at the Princess Margaret Hospital should fully understand that operations stressed on a normal basis can be completely pushed to the brink of collapse under the threat of COVID-19.

A major indicator of our effectiveness early on against COVID-19 was our ability to avoid the destabilisation of our healthcare system. Now, it is disconcerting that fears of inadequate PPE still remain a topic of conversation this many months in and with cases rising. Even more disquieting is the PHA’s defensiveness without proof that healthcare workers are being sufficiently resourced.

On the contrary, what we can see is healthcare workers coming down with the virus, instances of burnout and last week’s occurrences of PHA staff calling in sick on New Providence and Grand Bahama – evidence that all is not well. Public relations will not make this go away and anything that looks like inflated PR should be rejected outright as we work toward removing the political barriers preventing us from working together.

COVID-19 has unfortunately become very political when economies, lives and the health and well-being of citizens hang in the balance.

The continued stones being thrown from each side of the political divide could not be more unhelpful at this juncture. What we have is political leaders sticking and moving – focusing on the battle rather than combining forces to win what has proven thus far to be a war we are in with a most formidable opponent – an incredibly challenging test of our wherewithal.

A telltale sign is our standing in the region, as countries that we like to believe view us as the crown jewel, are performing head and shoulders above us amid this pandemic. Let’s put this into context. Just last year, 31 million people visited Caribbean nations, with more than half of those tourists that account for the region’s $59bn GDP hailing from the US.

Some of the better responses to the pandemic have come from nations like Barbados whose current case count sits at 138, only 38 of which are active. Barbados has also been promoting an innovative initiative to create a tourism bubble of sorts – inviting foreigners to live and work in the country whose main source of income is tourism for a year. Meanwhile, we are fighting for dear life to return to such low case numbers – a goal that is certainly hoped to be achieved by the current lockdowns. But with cases currently out of control, we may have turned a corner that has removed the possibility of returning to a state resembling normalcy further into 2021.

After going back and forth on whether we were opening or closing the country to Americans, they’ve made no bones about advising their citizens not to visit The Bahamas, even as they’ve lifted their international travel advisory. Of course, the hope is these difficult measures will allow us to yet again fend off this invisible enemy. However, with another shutdown that has forced local businesses that would have made significant investments in reopening to have to halt operations again, many of them will not survive this. And even if those businesses are able to hold on, many of their employees will be let go.

The nation’s social safety net is not prepared to take on such a heavy load, as this is not anything we imagined happening.

Families being unable to feed themselves during this time is becoming more commonplace. There is no shortage of heart-wrenching stories detailing the misery our brothers and sisters are experiencing.

Labour Director John Pinder’s indication that more than 40 percent of the people living in the country are unemployed paints a horrifying picture. Particularly, considering his projection that as long as economic activity is parked, these numbers are likely going to increase. We are in very perilous times.

If we are conservatively saying more than 90,000 people in the country are unemployed, when just in December 2019, this number was down to around 22,500, the COVID-19 effect has left almost 70,000 people here without jobs. Back in April, the UN’s labour body projected that when it is all said and done, globally, 195 million jobs may be lost - noting that more than 80 percent of workers worldwide live in countries affected by full or partial lockdown measures.

Citizens of The Bahamas, being one of the countries whose economy depends so heavily on the health and wealth of Americans to travel, are being forced to adjust to some hard realities.

Despite the $1m being spent on feeding Bahamians and the almost $80m already paid out in unemployment benefits, NIB says there are 55,000 people seeking assistance; leaving around 15,000 or 39 percent of those that are unemployed potentially falling through the cracks. Add in the thousands of young people graduating from high school and college ballooning those numbers and we can clearly understand that no matter what the government does, there is no getting around the enormous amount of pain we are going to experience until we get through this.

As I’ve mentioned before, getting through this will only happen if it’s done together. That means, everyone’s role has to be seen as one of importance. Those within Parliament and in wider society – each of us – has to be involved.

The government has to become less sensitive. Other political bodies need to become more included. And the people need to become more nation-minded.

We need to bind ourselves together and focus on the common enemy.