With United States registering high number of coronavirus cases, Bahamas introduces stringent entry regulations

The Bahamas has reversed itself on COVID-19 tests for tourists.

After announcing that foreign visitors and Bahamians returning home will not need to obtain a negative COVID-19 test when the country reopens on July 1 to international commercial flights, Tourism and Aviation Minister Dionisio D’Aguilar told Parliament that a negative test will now be required, Miami Herald has reported.

“There has been much concern expressed about the reopening of the country to foreign visitors,” D’Aguilar said. “The Bahamas, which now requires a COVID 19 test to enter the country up to July 1, will also require a COVID-19 test after July 1.”

D’Aguilar said the archipelago, which partially reopened last week to returning nationals, private charters and pleasure crafts, is in a tough spot.

On the one hand, he said, the Bahamas needs foreign visitors, of which US travellers account for 82%, to restart the economy. However on the other hand, there are legitimate health concerns that the very people the Bahamas needs to restart the tourism sector could end up causing a spike in COVID-19 cases.

“With the reopening of businesses in all 50 states and the protests that have been taking place in many of the major cities throughout the US, most states are now reporting spikes in the number of positive results from COVID 19 tests,” D’Aguilar said. “Given the spike in the number of positive COVID-19 tests in the United States and the uncertainty surrounding just how many cases will require hospitalization, the government of the Bahamas has decided to maintain the current status quo until further notice.”

Last month, the Bahamas joined Haiti in requiring travellers to present a negative real time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction diagnostic test from an accredited lab to gain entry. St. Lucia soon announced the same testing requirement ahead of its June 4 reopening to US travellers only, and then Bermuda too implemented the same testing requirement. Bermuda’s tourism ministry says visitors will need to present a negative PCR COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of their arrival into the British territory as well as proof of medical insurance.

Jamaica, which reopened its airports last Monday, is requiring tourists and returning nationals to undergo some kind of quarantine and risk-based PCR COVID-19 testing at the airport or a designated government facility based on the countries they are traveling from, exposure to COVID-19 and other risk factors. The country is also limiting tourist movement to a “COVID-19 Resilient Corridor” in order to manage and contact trace any infections among workers or visitors.

The issue of testing has become both a sensitive and complicated one as countries in the Caribbean seek to relaunch their tourism sectors and invite travellers back after more than three months of shuttered hotels, closed airports and 24-hour-a-day lockdowns to control the transmission of the virus.

But the so-called “virus-free” certificates, which are also known as immunity passports, remain controversial. The World Health Organization and Pan American Health Organization have both expressed discomfort with the travel requirement as doctors and scientists stress they still lack a lot of information about the coronavirus and immunity after one becomes infected.