 Prime Minister Hon. Alan Chastney has heaped praise on the St. Lucian public for what he deemed an incredible job in adhering to the COVID-19 protocols during a time traditionally known for island-wide celebration. Hon. Chastney says he knows it was extremely difficult for nationals not to enjoy juniquial on the weekend in the grand fashion of years past. Cancelling the cultural festivity the Prime Minister noted resulted in major revenue losses as well as dampened spirits due to restrictions that impeded socialization. Knowing that we didn't have carnival and this was really an opportunity for us to have gotten out it's sad that we found ourselves in this situation and I don't even want to add up how much money was lost this weekend and how many persons were looking forward to selling their goods but more importantly the social the socialization that was going to take place but I really want to thank all solutions for adhering to the protocols not making it overly difficult for the policemen and not putting unnecessary pressure on the authorities. St. Lucian's were urged not to compromise their safety despite the temptation to gather and celebrate in this annual festival the plea was particularly strong given that the island has recorded a total of 18 new cases in the span of one week. The new cases that we're getting the good news is that most of these cases are already in quarantine so it tells us that the contact tracing and that the team at the contact tracing have been doing an outstanding job and we're ahead of it if I can say that ahead in that we understand who's been affected and putting the persons at the highest risk into a quarantine situation. Sadly more than likely numbers are going to continue to rise. The fact that we have a hospital facility dedicated for as a respiratory center is good news. The fact that we have over 85 doctors and nurses from Cuba here to augment our doctors and nurses is good news. Prime Minister Shasne encouraged the St. Lucian's to continue to wear their face masks, social distance and sanitize their hands in order to stay safe from COVID-19. We can coexist. We can keep our doors open. We can be open for business. We can make sure that people who'd lost their jobs they can get their jobs back and this idea that it's either health or economics is not a fair comparison anymore. We need both. Clearly we're always going to be more sensitive to the health side because we can't bring somebody's life back. But once we continue to do what we did this weekend, St. Lucia will be fine and I amongst I'm sure a lot of other people are very proud to see how St. Lucia's acted this weekend and how strong they're taking the recommendations of the CMO. We've got a great CMO. We have a great Ministry of Health, the contact tracers, great frontliners all throughout St. Lucia, but more important than we've got great citizens and we can win this battle together. We can do this and your government is fully behind you to try to do everything that we can to ensure that we see a recovery to our economy and that we continue to keep people very safe in our countries. Prime Minister Hon. Alan Shasne.