THE baton has passed from one government to another, and so, it would seem, has the blame for the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic – if former Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis is to be believed.

It’s not as simple as that, of course. The government of Dr Minnis had a large part in the handling of the situation. After all, his Health Minister, Renward Wells, was over optimistically talking about herd immunity potentially being achieved by August, before the election. That didn’t happen, and was one of several questionable statements by Mr Wells.

So it would be foolish to pretend that the previous government didn’t play a part in getting us where we are now – the question is whether or not the new government since its arrival has made decisions that are making things better… or worse.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, the new government moved to loosen some of the restrictions that had been in place under the Minnis administration. Curfew moved to midnight, while there have been changes to the travel health visa, which is no longer required for inter-island travel.

Meanwhile, the other much promised measure from Philip “Brave” Davis and his team in Opposition to tackle the pandemic – free COVID testing – has yet to materialise.

The first signs of that began to appear yesterday, with the Ministry of Health and Wellness announcing that the free testing programme will be launched – but only as a pilot – in Family Islands currently experiencing clusters of COVID-19 cases.

Islands such as Andros, Eleuthera and Inagua are currently experiencing a significant spike in cases.

A blitz of testing in areas with high numbers of cases is good, to try to find people affected before they can unwittingly spread it to others, and use quarantine to stop the spread – but this pilot programme is significantly short of the free testing for all promised.

Now it can be said of course that any new government needs to have time to find its feet, but there’s no time to do that in the middle of a pandemic.

More than that, if you’re not ready to implement your plan on reducing the spread of the virus, why lift the restrictions before you’re ready to act?

The outlook is grim at present. Over the weekend, there were another 18 deaths reported. That’s 18 people whose Bahamian families and friends are in mourning today.

Meanwhile, another 113 people are in hospital, 12 of those in intensive care. And if all that weren’t enough, funeral directors are bringing in coffins in bulk because of the high numbers of deaths being experienced in The Bahamas right now. Some funeral directors are saying that the demand for their services is roughly double what it was just months ago.

There is one criticism by Dr Minnis that is fair, and which we hope his successor will act upon. He asked: “Why has the Prime Minister failed to address the country on the measures his administration will take to remedy a variety of matters related to the pandemic?”

That is a fair question to ask. Mr Davis had a plan before coming into office, we were told, and he’s been in office long enough now to be able to lay that plan out to the public. He isn’t to blame for the pandemic starting, or for it reaching our shores – but it’s time to explain what he intends to do from here.

It’s time, in short, to start making good on those election trail promises.