D’Aguilar: Expected CDC policy a worrying impediment to tourism

The United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) move to require all travelers arriving into the United States from international destinations to provide a negative RT-PCR COVID-19 test is a “worrying” impediment to tourism in The Bahamas, Minister of Tourism and Aviation Dionisio D’Aguilar said yesterday.

The National Business Aviation Association – a US-based non-profit organization that represents more than 11,000 companies – announced this week that it expects the new policy to soon be released following meetings with the CDC and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

D’Aguilar said this would be a significant change in the rules that would have a significant impact on how potential travelers make their decisions to travel overseas.

“This is a most concerning development. If Americans are required or any persons travelling to the United States are required to get a PCR test 72 hours before arrival in the United States, this is a significant development. This I would say is a major impediment to tourism in The Bahamas. Think about it, persons coming to The Bahamas would have to get a PCR test in order to enter The Bahamas and then they would have to get a PCR test to return to the United States,” he told Guardian Business.

“There is also the issue of cost for persons returning to the United States and there’s also the issue of actually being able to secure the test. So in Nassau that might be possible, but certainly in the Family Islands that is not possible. This would be very concerning. Persons would assess the difficulty in traveling to the destination, figure out you need all these tests, figure out that you can’t get tests on some of our Family Islands and they would probably decide not to travel.

“I am very, very concerned. I am speaking to as many persons as I can, calling my colleague ministers of tourism throughout the Caribbean, calling anyone that I know in the United States to say that this will have a significant impact, not only on travel to The Bahamas but on travel to the Caribbean in general.”

The tourism sector has seen a sluggish return since it was officially reopened in November as the United States, the country’s largest source market, still battles spiraling COVID-19 cases.

Nonetheless, D’Aguilar said the government will “have to impress upon our great neighbor to the north” how desperately The Bahamas and the region as a whole needs to be excluded from this policy.

“This is extremely worrying, extremely concerning and I’m hoping that the United States steps back from this blanket policy to every country across the world and take a more discerning view where they look at a country, look at the level of COVID-19 in that country and assess them on whether they need this test or not,” he said.

“That is the only way that this will not have a significant impact on our tourism product, because we feel right now that the level of COVID-19 in our country is relatively low, especially when you compare to the United States and we feel we are a low-risk country for persons returning to the United States having visited The Bahamas.”

The minister said the nation’s airline partners are also “fighting back against this blanket rule”.

Canada has already imposed the requirement for airline passengers entering the country to have a negative RT-PCR test within 72 hours upon arrival, including an immediate 14-day quarantine.

“Well, as you can imagine there’s nobody that’s going to travel outside of Canada with those types of requirements, unless you absolutely have to or you’re going for a long time,” D’Aguilar said.

He added his hope is that the US implements a similar travel policy as the United Kingdom, which only requires a negative RT-PCR test for persons arriving from countries with high COVID-19 community spread.

“My response would be in much the same way as the United Kingdom did, assess the level of COVID-19 and community spread in the countries from which the people are travelling. So if the level of community spread in a particular country is relatively low, they should be able to assess that a PCR test isn’t necessary to travel to the United States. I just think that by applying it in a blanket fashion to every country in the world, it really creates a difficulty for those countries where it is incredibly difficult to get a PCR test,” D’Aguilar said.

“Even in certain areas of the United States, they’re finding it difficult to get a PCR test within five days to come to The Bahamas. You would imagine, in this country, the amount of stress that would put on our testing facilities, not only trying to meet the demands of our local people but also for visitors attempting to return. Could you imagine what backup that would have caused in the labs during the Christmas season? And then to add another level of complexity, for those islands where people make short trips – for example if you go from Miami to Bimini, to Chub Cay, to Grand Bahama on a day trip – it’s almost going to be impossible to do that.”

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/daguilar-expected-cdc-policy-a-worrying-impediment-to-tourism/