Tag: COVID19

With over 200 new vessels registered by the Department of Planning and Natural Resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, the installation of additional moorings across the U.S. Virgin Islands has become paramount to sustaining the demand for transient vessels.

The U.S. Virgin Islands has expended over half of its $546 million in CARES Act funding issued subsequent to the COVID-19 outbreak, Office of Management and Budget Director Jenifer O'Neal told the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday.

With the world still in the thralls of the COVID-19 pandemic, and people tucked away in their homes and many children barred from classrooms, crime appears to have flourished in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Virgin Islands Bureau of Internal Revenue has sent out an initial 10,000 COVID relief checks, but BIR Director Joel Lee told lawmakers Tuesday it will be more than a month before the process is complete.

The Department of Education is now well past the Jan. 25 date it had predicted students would return to school, and Friday could not tell senators when the reopening would take place.

The ongoing global health crisis has changed the United States Virgin Islands' tourism industry in several ways, Tourism Commissioner Joseph Boschulte said on Tuesday.

Effective Jan. 26, travelers entering the United States and its territories will be required to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test before boarding the aircraft at their foreign embarkation points.

Now that the fall semester has begun, Virgin Islands students, parents and educators are faced with the challenging realities of distance learning, not least of all that laptops designated for each of the territory's students have not reached everyone.

With one week of safe-at-home down, officials said Monday that the second week of Gov. Albert Bryan Jr.’s ongoing order is “pivotal” as the territory has not yet begun to experience “the decline in positivity rates we were hoping to achieve,” the governor said.

Celestino A. White Sr. Senior Citizens Residence and the Lucinda Millin Home on St. Thomas are both free of the novel coronavirus, Virgin Islands Housing Authority public relations officer Patricia Borns said.