Tonight, COVID is spreading across Belize - and it's spreading security forces thin. Between the BDF and Police, 250 law enforcement personnel are at home - either in self isolation after a positive test, or in quarantine because they were exposed.
For the police, 100 cops are at home because of COVID - 60 have tested positive for the virus, while another 40 are in quarantine because of possible exposure.
Today, via Zoom video conference, the Commissioner of police told us that he's been forced to re-deploy manpower to keep domestic security at an optimal level - and it's not been easy:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"It is really sad for us that we currently have a number of 61 police officers who are infected with the COVID-19 virus. Since the start of COVID-19 we have had 88 infected officers, some of whom have recovered, and we have 61 active cases. Those active cases are currently in isolation and we also have about 40 or so police officers who have are in quarantine, pending results. So the COVID-19 pandemic has truly hit us hard, police officers on a daily basis, we have to interact with people, we conduct house searches, we conduct people searches, we have to arrest people and those are activities that brings us in direct contact with individuals, many of whom we do not know what their status are, so it really and truly puts us at risk and even though yes, we try our utmost best to ensure that officers wear their PPE, at times the PPE does not serve the purpose the way we would expect it to. Just over the past 2 weeks, we had to change our personnel from along the Santa Cruz, San Victor Douglas area, those are involved in the contraband hotspots because many of them were infected with the virus as well."
Jules Vasquez
"Should rapid testing be made available for frontline workers, especially those who have to be in constant contact with new members of the public on daily basis?"
Chester Williams
"I did get that suggestion this morning from a good friend who suggested to me that we should being to do our own rapid testing as police and it is something that I'm going to discuss with my minister to see what support we can get for that. I do believe that yes, if we can do that it would help significantly because the truth is, we come into contact with a lot of people and to arrest somebody requires physical contact with that individual."
Jules Vasquez
"How has the quarantining and the self-isolation and the diagnosis of so many officers, so many dozen of officers affected your ability to deploy and police effectively when your juggling man power from hotspot to the other?"
Chester Williams
"I think Jules I need to go into the world chess competition, and I might win that competition, it's like juggling and playing chess. It is difficult at times because separate and a part from the fact that we have about 100 or so officers out of commission, we also since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we have also lost at least about another 100 officers due to attrition, either resignation, dismissal, person retiring, going off medically, deaths, etc, so we have also loss over 100 due to attrition since the COVID-19 pandemic. So, you can see where our numbers is depleting but despite that, we continue to remain effective and efficient as we can."
Fortunately, No police officers are currently hospitalised for COVID symptoms.
