Today's press encounter with the President of the Belize Hotel Association also led to a conversation about the public health concern connected to Monkeypox.
Since May, public health authorities worldwide have been tackling an outbreak of the disease. More than 35 thousand cases of the illness have been reported to the World Health Organization. Those reports have come from 92 countries and territories, and 12 deaths have been reported.
Almost 7,500 cases were reported last week, which is estimated to be a 20% increase over the previous week. One affected country is the USA. Since the US is one of Belize's major sources of tourist inflows, the media asked the President about their concerns about the virus.
Here's what he had to say about his hopes that Belizeans will not dismiss the monkeypox threat:
Reynaldo Malik - President, Belize Hotel Association
"Boy, it seems like the hits just keep on coming. For the time being, we are - I don't want to say at the mercy of, but the information coming to us is a little limited. So, we're having to do our own research, learning the basics of it. On the top of my head, I would say that this is a little bit scarier than COVID, believe it or not, simply because, with COVID, we could wear a mask. We could social distance etc. This one, it's said that the most common way it spreads is just basically off of surfaces. So, that's a little scarier because how are we then not going to touch surfaces through our daily lives, our routines? So, this one to me is a little bit scarier, but one of the things that encourage me is that it's not an unknown. It's really been around for a while, so there are treatments and vaccines out there for it. Hopefully, we will take something like this much more seriously than we did with COVID in the early days, and get the necessary programs in place, whether it's through the Ministry of Health. Then in cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism, any business, whether it's in tourism or any business in general, [that] we take this very seriously, and whatever guidelines they come up with - and I hope that it's soon - that we start to exercise those guidelines as quickly as possible."
