After more than a year of virtual and more recently, a hybrid of virtual and in-person meetings, members of the Grenada Cabinet on Monday shared the same physical space for their weekly meeting.
The decision to resume in-person meetings was made following recent guidance from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, and Grenada’s Ministry of Health, which suggests that fully vaccinated persons can resume activities without wearing masks or physical distancing.
At Monday’s meeting, while the Ministers were not physically distanced, they continued to wear their masks, as the country has not yet taken a position on exempting fully vaccinated persons from wearing masks.
Chairman of the Cabinet Prime Minister Dr the Right Honourable Keith Mitchell welcomed the return to normal. He said, “The virtual and hybrid meetings, while convenient, are not always ideal for discussions at the Cabinet level. I certainly welcome the fact that we are now back to our regular meetings. This goes to show that we can in fact return to some sense of normalcy, once we get vaccinated. Therefore, I take this opportunity again to encourage persons to get vaccinated.”
Despite the widespread impact of the pandemic, the Cabinet continued to meet seamlessly as a result of the timely launch of the e-Cabinet initiative which occurred just before the country instituted lockdown measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Since then, meetings have progressed to a hybrid nature with some members meeting in person on a rotational basis, while the remainder joined via a virtual platform.
