SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The Caribbean is desperately looking for tourists and vaccines to revive the economy in one of the world’s most tourism-dependent regions.
Clear waters and heat sand attracted a record 31.5 million tourists to the Caribbean in 2019, but visits plummeted by an estimated 60% to 80% as the pandemic hit the last yr. That’s devastating for an area whose nations depend heavily on Tourism revenue.
Determined to create safe conditions for tourism, the Caribbean is turning to India and China for vaccines at a time when global supplies are strained and richer nations are ahead of them in line for shots from other sources. A few have been lucky to get quick shipments, whereas others could wait weeks, if not months.
The Caribbean saw COVID-19 levels rising in November, along with variants feared to be more contagious. More than 522,000 cases and more than 7,500 deaths have been reported in 35 of the area’s nations and territories.
The small nations adopted a variety of anti-virus measures, nearly all requiring visitors at a minimum to show recent negative tests upon arrival.
Cuba – the largest Caribbean nation and the only one working on its own vaccines – choked off arrivals after seeing infections surge. It requires visitors to stay in designated hotels and to take new tests upon landing.
International travelers to St. Kitts and Nevis should stay at certain hotels, and St. Eustatius requires guests to register their reason for touring before giving approval.
Many islands ask visitors to isolate themselves, though how long and under what conditions can vary: Those arriving in the Cayman Islands or Barbados must stay inside a hotel for at least a week or face jail. Others, like Puerto Rico, don’t require quarantine if a negative test is presented upon arrival, and tourists can roam the U.S. territory’s beaches and forests.
Aruba, Anguilla, Curacao and Montserrat, and others have promoted themselves as havens for those who can work by internet from a room by the sea, though officials can be harsh on guests who flout virus restrictions.
Amongst those in Jamaica, which had pursued an aggressive reopening to tourism despite not receiving a single cargo of vaccines. On Sunday, however, it announced it was closing public beaches and rivers till March 22.
Its government says it expects to receive 50,000 vaccines from India this week and 14,400 AstraZeneca vaccines next week via the COVAX program. It also anticipates receiving 1.8 million vaccine doses by April via the African Medical Supply Platform, a nonprofit initiative by the African Union.
Barbados, with some 300,000 people, received 100,000 doses from India, and the prime minister thanked New Delhi for its “quick, decisive, and magnanimous action.” Barbados donated 2,000 doses to Trinidad and Tobago. That twin-island nation of 1.2 million remains under strict virus restrictions and has requested 250,000 doses from India.
India also has helped the Dominican Republic and Antigua and Barbuda, but the region remains far short of what’s needed to achieve herd immunity for the over 18 million people within the Caribbean Community trade bloc.
Meanwhile, China sent 768,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine to the Dominican Republic, a country of 10.6 million people, which is also starting to get shipments of AstraZeneca and Pfizer shots.
Beijing also has pledged to ship 20,000 doses by March to Guyana.
