Bermuda cannot afford to let its guard slip because the country has gone more than a week without news Covid-19 cases, the Premier warned last night.

David Burt highlighted that “many of us are letting our guard down” and that it would only take one or two new cases of the illness for “us to begin to flare up again”.

He said the island had been lucky to have avoided an acceleration in the number of Covid-19 cases.

But Mr Burt added: “I am not optimistic as other persons are.

“I’m not optimistic because I don’t actually believe people in the country are taking this disease seriously, as they should.”

He said: “The fact is that we still do have a risk and it doesn’t take a lot to end up moving backwards.”

Mr Burt, who has underlined the need to reopen the economy on a regular basis, added the Government had taken “a calculated risk to open more quickly”.

He said: “The thing is, you wait two incubation periods. We waited 1½ incubation periods before moving into Phase 3.

“We moved personal services up before other jurisdictions may have had them. I think we’re going to have to adopt a wait-and-see approach.

“I am not optimistic — I am remaining guarded. That needs to be the attitude of the entire country.

“We are in some instances acting as though, because we have this low number of cases, that all is well.”

Mr Burt added coronavirus tests figures were “not as high as I would like them” and that he looked forward to people using test stations to be set up outside supermarkets next week.

He emphasised: “We need to remember this virus is still here, this virus is still on our shores, this virus is still circulating in our community.”

Mr Burt reminded the public that asymptomatic transmission meant that masks should still be worn and social-distancing maintained.

He said: “I’m not looking at this as ‘yes, we’re successful; we have defeated the coronavirus’.

“The coronavirus is going to be with us for a very long time and we’re going to have to learn to live with this virus.”

Mr Burt encouraged anyone who had not had coronavirus test to sign up for one.