A passenger in a taxi shows his identification to a police officer at a checkpoint at the Clarendon/St. Catherine border on Friday morning (April 17). Various checkpoints have been established throughout St. Catherine, following Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness’ announcement on April 14 of a lockdown of the parish in a bid to contain the spread of the...

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, says instructions have been given to the Ministry of Health and Wellness to rapidly expand testing for COVID-19. “This is why they have rolled out the [mobile units]. They are going to be increasing the number of tests done,” Mr. Holness said in a statement to the House of Representatives on Wednesday (April...

The Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) is exploring several options that can potentially enable the entity to execute key data-collection activities, which have been affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19). Among these, Director General, Carol Coy, says, is the addition of a COVID-19 module in the July 2020 Labour Force Survey, “if circumstances allow [this]”. She was speaking during a virtual...

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in St. Elizabeth, Nadine Grant-Brown, says plans are in progress for the rollout of the JamaicaEye initiative in the parish. The national closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance programme involves networking cameras owned by the Ministry of National Security as well as accommodating feed from privately owned CCTV cameras. The feeds will provide useful footage in relation...

Sixty-two of the country’s 68 business process outsourcing (BPO) facilities were inspected between March 14 and April 15, with a particular focus on the coronavirus (COVID-19) risk, and all but 12 passed the inspection. These have since been provided with a work plan to address their issues. This was noted by Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher...

A total of $50,261,320 has been raised, so far, from the ‘Telethon Jamaica: Together We Stand’ event held on Easter Sunday (April 12), towards procuring personal protective equipment for front-line workers to fight COVID-19. Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, Hon. Olivia Grange, made the disclosure during a statement to the House of Representatives on April 15. “I want...

Faced with the challenge of locating 112 workers from the Portmore branch of the call centre, Alorica Jamaica, Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, is calling on workers who have not yet been contacted, to make themselves available for testing as the country seeks to contain the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). In the past few...