PREMIER OF BERMUDA ADDRESSES BERMUDA – JUNE 27, 2021

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  

Statement from the Premier of Bermuda, the Hon. David Burt, JP, MP

There are causes to which we should rally and come together. Two families in Bermuda are mourning young men, taken from them so unexpectedly. This in addition to the families who have lost their lives to COVID-19. Have we become so lost in social media play in Bermuda that we fail to value those lives lost and to make our first priority to comfort the families they leave behind? Our sense of community and our priorities must be re-ordered so that we again capture the love and unity that saw us through the darkest days of 2020.

No amount of unsigned WhatsApp forwards or baseless character attacks will save lives in this country. We are on the verge of change; either positive change with strong borders aggressively defeating the potential harm that variants bring or the most negative change possible where a variant outbreak occurs and we have seriously ill people whose families could lose their loved ones. We see countries around the world forced to re-implement restrictions due to outbreaks of new and dangerous variants. In Bermuda we’ve lived that already this year, with an outbreak of a new variant costing us 21 lives, which robbed our students of in-person learning, and our citizens the opportunity to provide for their families.

The people of Bermuda know strong border protection is the only way we will reclaim this summer and move beyond the pandemic. They know that strong border protections combined with immunisation is the only way that we will be able to avoid the re-implementation of local restrictions.  But this is not unique to us. In Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Canada, governments have adopted risk-based border policies similar to those in Bermuda, so that economies can be renewed and people can begin to live their lives agai

The Government is committed to making the tough decisions required to move this Island beyond the pandemic. Governing a country during a once in a century pandemic is not easy, but it is necessary that in the face of storms that the Government remains focused on its principle objective, and that is to keep the people of this island we call home safe.