And the COVID deaths have quintupled since PUP office, going from less than 80 on election day, to 451 today.
Now COVID is a ruthless, unstoppable virus which no country in the world has been able to truly contain, so we can't say it's Government's fault. But, on the other hand, early this year, the PUP boasted about bringing COVID under control, saying that the UDP, along with Dr Marvin Manzanero, had royally messed up as we went through the second wave.
So, now that the third wave is rolling deep with daily new cases in the triple digits and the number of deaths soaring upwards, who's to blame? Well, the Prime Minister says it's the fault of the Delta Variant:
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"For the UDP to say because what the UDP has been saying is that we've not been handling this properly well let me point out something, the Alpha variant is nowhere close to contagious as the Delta variant. And under the Alpha, the UDP lost control of COVID. They're telling us we're not doing enough testing, during their time they did about 30,000 test, that's all, during our time we've done about 250,000 test that we have done so how can you make that comparison. When they left government, they only made arrangements for 100,000 vaccine. They didn't pay for it, we have to pay for it. Because of the efforts that we did, our vaccine diplomacy and also making monies available for more vaccinations, we have enough vaccinations for every from the age 12 to 100."
Reporter:
"You all blamed one man for the deaths under the second wave, do you blame someone in this case or do you retract that you all should not have blamed him for those deaths?"
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I don't think we've ever blamed one man, I don't think I've ever blamed Dr Manzanero for the deaths, what I've said is that Dr Manzanero didn't have a plan as to what is it that we're going to do and right now we do have a plan and that's what we've been doing, we've been following the science, we've been testing people, we've been getting the vaccinations ad doing everything possible to protect people but also people have to do their part and back them they did not have the delta variant that we are dealing with that is far more contagious."
