Governor Albert Bryan just announced that the U. S. Virgin Islands will go into mandatory “Stay-at-home” status from Monday, August 17th.
This decision was highly influenced by the recent surge that saw the U.S. territory recording a massive 106 news cases in two days.
The new order scheduled to run for atleast two weeks will see the closure of all non-essential businesses and private schools.
Restaurants will operate on a “take-out” only basis while bars and churches remain closed.
On Tuesday, D.O.H. reported 63 cases of the coronavirus territory-wide, with St. Thomas accounting for 57 of those cases.
The Dept. of Health listed almost all of the St. Thomas cases — 51 — in the under investigation category, meaning D.O.H. as of Tuesday night was still attempting to determine how the new cases were transmitted. The six St. Thomas cases that D.O.H. did determine included 5 community spread infections and 1 close contact.
On St. Croix, 5 new cases were reported, 4 of which were close contact and 1 community spread. St. John had 1 new case, which was under investigation as of Tuesday night.
The Dept. of Health is tracking 162 active cases: 139 in St. Thomas and 19 on St. Croix. St. John had 4 active cases as of Tuesday night.
In total, 639 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and 9 people have died. According to D.O.H., 11,444 people have been tested for the virus, with 10,778 tests returning negative.