Prime Minister Andrew Holness made the announcement at a virtual press conference from Jamaica House yesterday evening as the Government continues to reconfigure protocols for entry and re-entry to the island in its push to fully reopen the country in spite of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Holness said that after a month of the controlled re-entry programme, the projected 2.5 per cent positive rate or 851 cases of COVID-19 has instead seen an outturn of 0.7 per cent, or 82 positive cases since June 1.

Thirty-one thousand applications have been processed for Jamaicans and visitors who wish to come to the island, which includes 23,000 residents and 8,000 non-residents, while approximately 14,600 people have arrived in the island since the controlled re-entry began — including 9,300 residents and 5,300 non-residents.

We did that very high-level control protocol so that we could establish, using very stringent criteria, what is the risk that the population faces from the re-entry programme,” Holness emphasised, adding, “We now know what the risk is... What it means is that we can reconfigure the limited resources that we have.”

He said with the health ministry now having the benefit of testing for entry for over a month, protocols can be reconfigured to allow for more efficient use of limited resources for testing and surveillance at ports and within the island