And so while the Prime Minister sees no conflict with hiring Courtenay Coye, will the government have a conflict with its public health advisors when it soberly reviews the latest COVID figures.
As we told you, yesterday's COVID positivity rate was almost 15% - that is the highest it's been since February 11th.
Today's positivity rate remains high at 11.46%. Coming up on one of the biggest national public events, which is this weekend's national agriculture and trade show we asked the PM, is his government willing to consider an outdoor mask mandate - the kind that's being re-implemented in Jamaica right now.
He didn't say yes or no, but certainly didn't seem inclined to do so:
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Well, I don't know yet as we said. We will listen to the experts. The Minister of Health is out of the country, he went to Geneva and I think he will be back this weekend, so I guess by Tuesday we will be hearing from him. As we all knew Covid has not disappeared, but we know more how it operates and how it affects you and it seems that the severity is getting less and less, only that this time its affecting a lot of children and even in children it gives them a high temperature and with a lot of aches in the body. But so far we have not seen any signs that it is more deadly than Omicron or even Delta."
Reporter
"Should we be going ahead with something that the business community has interest in such as the Agriculture Show?"
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Well, I think that in the Agriculture Show, I think that people are excited about the agriculture show, because people are very excited about what have been accomplish with agriculture and I encourage everybody to go, but if you want to feel safer then take your mask."
