Wouldn't it be wise of the Government to maybe give BPL $100 million to buy oil now at these cheap price? This would save the Bahamian consumer a large amount of money which the Government can demand gets paid back over the time this fuel is bought in. Or would that be too smart, and it would be better to give BPL the $100 million over a couple years to fund their excessive workforce.

I read in the other Newspaper that work permit holders are not entitled to the unemployment benefit. Whilst this does not affect me, how is this right. As ,long as these people have paid what is due they should be entitled to what benefits there are. If they are not then they should reduce their contributions.

Fully agree. Realtors are always begging Government to reduce the tax they take but never willing to reduce what they take. the 6 and 10% were brought in when most property sold for much less. Now People like Mr. Christie can sell a $10 million property in Lyford, or Ocean Club and pocket $600,000. And they can do this more then once a year. So please stopping playing poor and reduce your fees as thats more annoying then paying Government .

I actually thought this was a good speech. Initially i was worried based on the other speeches when some major changes have occurred in the space of hours. But this time he realized the mistakes previously made and didn't do too many changes. Hopefully by May 4th we can start re-opening the country. Though until tourists come back we will still be in major problems. Government should consider a major infrastructure investment, if only to get people working during this time.

We also have one of the lowest level of testing in the world. If you only test those who are already very sick your death rate will be very high. They need to expand testing beyond only those who are very sick

Test and test plenty. We need to know who has it before we can really do anything. There are many who will have it and show no symptoms so we need to find them. Then this virus takes up to 14 days to show, so shut the country down fully for 20 days. But before you do that provide whatever it will take so social services can go to those that need it and deliver food boxes every couple of days. There are too many people on or below the breadline in this country for the Government to shut down for long periods with no help to those in the greatest need. Finally as others have mentioned stop having press conferences to do a huge change in an hour or twos time. That is not helping anyone except causing panic. People now do not trust the Government not to say anything stupid when the press conference is called so they start panicking before the conference happens.

This is a terrible piece of writing trying to masquerade as journalism. But thats to be expected from these writers who have not done one bit of actual journalism in years.

Super spreaders going to be busy the next two days in the supermarkets. Imagine if one of the cashiers or packer boys have it. Plenty going to get it now. WHy have they not implemented a serious testing regime. AS it is we just test when people go in to hospital which means that there are plenty who haven't got that far and got better but are not counted. Also 5 days won't help if the symptoms can take up to 14 days to show. If they serious about these shut downs being necessary they need to shut down for 3 weeks, but before they do make sure every family has the necessary means to purchase 3 weeks of food (no not those in the gated communities but the areas where people live day to day and will need serious help). Until then this is all a waste of time.

Reopen but those at high risk self isolate.

How long should we shut down for though? And should we shut down each time a new case is discovered. Seeing as they don't expect a cure for 12-18 months should we now shut down for that long?