With reports that several cases of the novel coronavirus have been discovered in the West Kingston community, which neighbours the teeming downtown Kingston market district, one urban planner wants the area shut down.
According to the Health Ministry some 721 people have been interviewed and 137 samples collected and sent to the National Public Health Laboratory for testing, as part of COVID-19 surveillance activities conducted in West Kingston last week.
Speaking with the Jamaica Observer on Friday, Professor Archer proposed a total lockdown along specific lines for the West Kingston community where the cases were reportedly discovered last week.
So in addition to the residents you have, also, persons coming in, and the prescription that the Chinese Government applied was a complete lockdown of the area so that it could be contained and that's both within the interest of the residents there and the wider community,” she told the Observer.
In early May this year, Professor Archer, speaking at a teleconference put on by UTech dubbed Prevention a Yard, argued that urban planing experts have been absent from the front of the battle with the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the Caribbean, despite being the ones with the skill sets most needed alongside that of health workers.
