Tourism presses campaign to open borders
(CNS): Ritz-Carlton general manager Marc Langevin, the new president of the Cayman Islands Tourism Association (CITA), is pressing on with the campaign to open Cayman’s borders to visitors. As cases of COVID-19 in the US, where most of those guests would come from, reach unprecedented levels and here in Cayman there are continued reports of quarantine breaches from home isolation and even government facilities, the Ritz GM maintained that the risks can be mitigated.
While Cayman is currently in the enviable position of being free of coronavirus community transmission, Langevin has made no secret that he believes that relaxing the strict border control to encourage more tourism is worth the risk. The newly elected head of the local tourism body has stressed the economic losses in the sector over the goal government has of saving lives by keeping the virus out of the wider community.
“If we want to have a chance at a reasonable level of business by the end of 2021, the vision of a progressive path, and hope for the achievement of key milestones of success needs to be created,” he said in press release from CITA this week.
“With the introduction of the vaccine, combined with additional layered protocols for testing, tracing and monitoring measures, risks can be mitigated for the general public and stay-over visitations resume without compromising our enviable quality of life,” he added.
However, with the first vaccines being injected into arms in the UK just this week, most experts are warning that this inoculation against COVID-19 will not have any meaningful impact until the spring or summer of next year. Meanwhile, as the crisis grows in the US, the daily death toll from COVID-19 was over 3,000 for the first time Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Nevertheless, the CITA board’s vision for 2021 is that by Easter 2021, stayover tourism will be 25% of 2019’s record breaking levels, then 50% by the middle of summer and a 75% return by Thanksgiving. The board claimed it had “reviewed the best practices from other Caribbean destinations and learned from the well tested protocols that Cayman could use in safely reopening the borders”.
CITA VP Michael Tibbetts, who owns resorts on each of the three islands, said CITA wasn’t calling for the doors to be thrown open and let everyone in but that Cayman had to find a way to allow visitors back while balancing the risk.
“We have a duty to first and foremost protect our community and employees from the spread of COVID-19,” he said. “However, we know that the virus will not be eradicated from the planet in the foreseeable future, so we need to develop a data driven approach that balances risk reduction with a logistically feasible strategy that allows visitors to return to Cayman.”
The release noted that tourism employees and the related businesses have been the hardest hit over the last nine months since the closure of ports in Cayman. While some people have not felt the economic strain from the absence of tourism, for others, the effect has been devastating.
The CITA board said they are representing the workers as well as affected tourism businesses whose livelihoods have been impacted by the closure.
The board said it was engaged in transparent communication with the community and the government, working with officials to collaboratively develop and implement protocols for testing, health monitoring, operating, tracing, isolation and vaccination so the borders can safely reopen in 2021.
I’m calling bullshit. How come since tourism is dead, now Caymanians are now “good enough” to stay there and they now rent out rooms to us to turn a profit?? I don’t like sloppy seconds, and Caymanians are no different.
Tell this story to anyone gullible enough to let 60 thousand be at the mercy of a deadly disease, just so wealthy hoteliers and developers can spare a dent in their overflowing bank accounts.
Hey Missa Mark, you and others will get the vaccine homya. So just wait nah! Tell ya boss he may run you but he nah run COVID-19.
Just face facts already. Non Caymanians do not have any representation here. Take your business elsewhere and don’t come back. Our King will keep us fed and we can live in your homes and hotels while you all go home and die of Covid.
Hello!
The Cayman Islands decided early in 2020 that dead customers are not repeat customers. I think that still holds true, especially looking at my intact healthy family, and while enjoying the freedoms we have. We didn’t want ANY risk, or to play this deadly game for short-sighted money. Happily, a very rare instance where Cayman Islands policy really out-shined that of any and all world-leading G-nation states.
If You Die ! Whom Will Be Spending The Dollars You Earned ?
Poor Marc he is out of his league and doesn’t even know it.
Who
“Langevin has made no secret that he believes that relaxing the strict border control to encourage more tourism is worth the risk”
Who cares what he believes.
He has neither the qualifications or authority to make such decisions on behalf of tens of thousands of other people.
XXX The press should cease supplying ink to spout his stupidity.
Sure that’s fine and when the schools inevitably shut The Ritz Carlton can reimburse me for every day I spend doing home schooling again.
I think Mr Langevin & Mr Tibbetts should first create a substantial escrow fund for all those potentially impacted by an outbreak, partial shutdown inclusive of HSA and those families impacted by contracting the virus and funeral expenses if they want to plié ahead with an early opening.
With that said, what I don’t understand is that there seems to be two messages being sent, – one, open the borders now, and the other alluding to the strategy of waiting for vaccination strategy which Govt is already targeting. Which one is it CITA President Langevin (employee of owner of multiple resorts) and VP Tibbetts (owner of three) with a primary motivation being for the workers ?, – step down from the bluster podium and relax yourselves, – as an industry provider you’re pissing me off with the arrogant and selfish attitudes.
Anybody wanting to go back to mask wearing and shopping only 3 days a week. Staying in your house for 4 ?
And how about my line of work, which relies on being able to bring large groups of people together for indoor group exercise? The minute covid returns I’ll have to shut back down. It’s not the entire economy that’s suffering with the closed borders, but many of us will once they do reopen. Oh ya and people will also get sick and die too so there is also that.
The vaccine is coming. Why not close the borders now until the majority of residents who want the vaccine have received it; then do a gradual re-opening with testing prior to arrival, on arrival … 5 days in quarantine … tested again and if negative free and then re-tested again after 10 days if still on Island. We must consider that anyone who breaches quarantine has the ability to spread the virus locally and all that the Islanders have sacrificed over the last 9 months will be in vain.
Saw that even the people you’re staying with or coming in close contact has to be vaccinated as well. Even if you’ve been vaccinated
You do know that the vaccine, appropriately named Covid19, does not stop the SARS-COV2 virus from spreading right? It just reduces the Covid19 disease symptoms…thats if you even get the disease…which baded on so many asymptomatics here hasnt been happening. Then theres the NNTV of 256 persons that need the Pfizer vax for ONE persons symptoms to be reduced. So if all 65K of us got the vaccine, it helps reduce the disease symptoms in like 250 people. Again, the vaccine does NOT kill the Virus. Letting in tourists who’ve had the vax does not stop them bringing the virus here.
Say that again because you lost me. You are claiming that the vaccine doesn’t protect people against COVID and will only reduce symptoms in 1 in 256 people? Just where are you getting your information from? Because it’s not the news that I have been watching. Are you an antivaxxer??
Not an anti vaxer. Have had all my necessary shots in life – shots that have worked for years and proven. Youre obviously not going to believe my information, neither will you read it on mainstream media but its out there on reputable sites if you reasearch and read vs being spoonfed. Look up at NHS or other govt sites what exactly the Covid19 vaccination does and does not do and then look up NNTV (numbers needed to vaccinate). If people at HMCI are versed in this information, then maybe you should be too.
They drug companies and regulators do not know if vaccinated people could be contagious or not, it was not tested, it is being tested now. Your claim might be true but there is no data yet. Your other point is just nonsense.
Why dont you look it up for yourself before you just start insulting people.
The vaccine may only last for 3 months. So much not known about this vaccine. I am getting it as I am a in a field that needs to be protected. For travel, I do not think it will matter. If I am vaccinated in January – second booster in February and travel in May,.I may be contagious again. Hmmmmm…….
Covid is something we are just going to have to live with and learn to protect ourselves using masks, social distancing and good hygiene.
The world will have no choice but adapt to living with covid. And so will the Cayman Islands. Once all reserves are spent, it will have no choice but to open its borders.
You can do a lot on a personal level to protect yourself from covid.
Ummm, we can actually not only survive, but thrive without tourism. Run the numbers, including the social and economic costs of the thousands of imported minimum wage workers required to sustain it.
Public promise and private wealth. Big dollar profits and penny-pincher donations. Same story, different crisis.
Don’t fall for this garbage, only it in for themselves and their millionaires club slave masters. All you need to hear.
“For the love of money is the root of all evil” – 1 Timothy 6:10
Oh noooo not Marc again. I thought he was still hiding in the Ritz. Stay home Marc
I see that today the government issued a statement regarding re-opening in the New Year based on proof of vaccination of at risk groups locally, a requirement for incoming travelers to have proof of vaccination prior to travel and ongoing testing. I am looking forward to seeing the small print on those proposals.
At least CITA has a vision of our borders reopening. I believe they are looking at the possibility of 25% by sometime in the spring. We have to start somewhere, and this sounds reasonable, at least they have a vision, that’s more then the government has given us. They are not pushing ahead with a plan to just fling open our borders, but a very gradual return in tourism.
You clearly have not seen the well thought out re-opening plan announced by government today.
The ‘resort bubble’ that is being advocated is really a quarantine zone that leaks like a sieve. It is nothing more than a place where infected travelers mix with healthy travelers until everyone gets sick. Oh and the staff that mix with the infected travelers then return to the community each day in order to spread disease. Sounds like a truly wonderful idea.
Don’t let the bubble staff return to the community. The hotel gives them housing inside the bubble. Staff would have to do CGI quarantine to leave the bubble. No more inconvenient than a 6 month gig on a cruise ship, or going to sea in the ’70s. When tourists arrive, take them in a sealed bus directly to the bubble. However, probably best to forget the whole thing. Unfortunately, Too many Caymanians are too sly, self centered, and undisciplined for such a plan to work without cheating. As you will recall, one of the LA member’s wife could not even forgo contact with her personal trainer a few months ago. At the time I thought “typical”. And USA Democrat leaders are just as hypocritical. Many are out having their hair done, eating in restaurants, going to the gym, at the same time that they are telling their “subjects” not to do so.
I read in another paper that the Covid is your friend campaign is saying that they are unaware of tourists spreading Covid. Clearly they don’t read much are readily forget what they read. Iceland had 2 people break quarantine and infect more than 100 local people.
https://www.icelandreview.com/society/covid-19-in-iceland-violated-isolation-and-infected-over-100/
BTW – the same paper misstated the number of active Covid cases in Bermuda. There are now 126 active cases in Bermuda up from 103 yesterday (not the lower number stated in the nameless other paper)
Hopefully government is not taking what the infect cayman campaign says seriously.
Idiot.
simple
Anyone who still thinks that Bermuda’s lax approach to quarantine and testing is a shining example for us to follow should take note that Bermuda now has 126 active cases, Bermuda’s Ro continues to rise, that they are experiencing more and more community spread, that more schools are closing, that some retail banks are now closing their public facing facilities, that they have had infected hospital staff and that they now have people sick with Covid in hospital including ICU. They should also note that Bermuda is now requiring people potentially exposed to quarantine at home for 14 days.
https://www.gov.bm/articles/covid-19-daily-release-10-december-2020
I am very thankful that our government did not buy into the spread Covid campaign.
You’ll note all of Bermuda’s cases are the result of returning residents breaking their arrival protocols, not visitors. The same thing could happen to Cayman today.
Not true. Some cases have been traced to returning residents infecting their families but not all. There are dozens of cases that Bermuda officially and conveniently classifies as source unknown in which it is highly likely that the source was infected tourists mixing with bar and restaurant patrons etc.
Barbados has a much larger population than Cayman. Their tourism sector has been open for months with many flights now coming in daily from Canada and the UK.
Barbados has had 290 active COVID cases and we have 292 active COVID cases. Why do they have less cases than us even though their tourism sector is open?
How many and how often do they test?
Iceland has a much bigger population than Cayman but a shorter quarantine period like Barbados. 2 tourists infected more than 100 locals.
https://www.icelandreview.com/society/covid-19-in-iceland-violated-isolation-and-infected-over-100/
Infection rates in Iceland have actually increased since the above article from late September. Please refer to a more recent article than the one you posted –
https://www.icelandreview.com/ask-ir/whats-the-status-of-covid-19-in-iceland/
They are experiencing their 3rd waves – bars and restaurants are now closed, no groups larger than 10, masks are mandatory in Iceland.
Agreed – I was simply making the observation that the argument being advanced by the Covid is your friend crowd that tourists never spread Covid is patently false and the Iceland example which involved the Iceland health authorities actually used RNA sequencing to prove that it was the tourists that spread the disease was a convenient example.
Dumb luck worked in Bermuda for a while too. Now look at the mess they are in.
Barbados population is >286,000 and they’ve only done 52,000 PCR tests since this all began. That tally includes two tests per visitor.
They do a lot of things better than us, education, employment immigration, district fish markets, fish fry…
Too many people are economically suffering here now. Surely we can examine some of the best practices in Barbados and Bermuda. We cannot go another year shutting down tourism like we are currently. We need to adapt in a reasonable and responsible way. It is not an all or nothing proposition as it has been the last couple of months.
We are headed for total economic disaster in 2021 with so many businesses going under or on the brink of going under. The only people who will survive will be in financial services.
We should follow Bermuda. It’s worked fantastically well with no, well some, well maybe quite a bit of, community transmission, and the Bermuda Premier most definitely did not say:
“We are in the midst of a large outbreak of the coronavirus here on our shores. The scale and scope of the number of positive cases is alarming and proves that we are not exempt from the realities of this global pandemic.We got complacent and we believed our own hype.”
Sorry, but the Cayman Islands public owes no duty to the thousands of migrant non-Caymanian workers that are imported to staff these hotels, nor to the rotten millionaire/billionaire hotel owners, who would lay them all off during a global business interruption humanitarian crisis, to spare a dent to their own billfold and decades of retained earnings. These bad actors would then gaslight their own layoffs choices as reason to invite danger to our shores? Cry me a river, on their callous and greedy disregard. Why do we give them any platform?
You give them a platform because they generate the revenue which allows the Civil Service to live on great salaries with yearly pay increases, and contribute to the costs of public schools and the health care system.
Money does not grow on coconut trees Bobo. Problem is that people here don’t know that.
Cut the garbage with yah picky head logic.
First, many people in the Civil Service (facing the public that get cussed out, disrespected, and talked down to like dogs by the ungrateful trash of the world we now allow to arrive here, in the names of tourism, progress, and diversity) barely make above minimum wage salaries and the occasional 4 percent wage increase is a mere $20-30 per annum extra. (Not all its cracked up to be; people would never even think to do this disrespectful nonsense in the US)
Second, until these egregious developers and hotel owners repay their government-funded concessions and spent government-funded gift cards with interest and inflation in full, don’t make the contribution argument. We all know those who are getting the real contributions and getting reimbursed “for their time”.
Third, public schools and health care has always been left to Government to sustain. Hotel owners and developers only send their children to private schools, only go to the private hospitals on island, and milk the public purse for any other party favors they can get to nurture their penny-pinching attitudes.
Tone-deaf story don’t hold water. The world is coming here to make, hide, or build their riches, clearly some Caymanians know something about money and wealth building.
By the way, learn the story about ‘The Wreck of the Ten Sails’ before you dictate rights and benefit off tax-free rules.
It’s a Dart owned hotel with duty waivers until 2041, contributing nothing.
Is Cayman the only country that quarantines and guards all arriving people?
The problem with the vaccine is that it appears causing anaphylactic in people with severe allergies, Bell’s palsy and who knows what else.
It also have not been tested in the frail elderly.
“Since they haven’t been studied in people in those populations, we don’t know how well the vaccine will work for them. We know that most vaccines don’t work nearly as well in a frail elderly person as they would in someone who is fit and vigorous, even if they happen to be the same age,” Moore said.
“There’s a question about the direct benefit of the vaccine, if given to people who live in those facilities, because we haven’t studied how well it works in that group yet.”
One of the things we want to make sure people understand is that they should not be unnecessary alarmed if there are reports, once we start vaccinating, of someone or multiple people dying within a day or two of their vaccinations who are residents of a long-term care facility. (Dr.Kelly Moore, AccociarecDirector of Immunization Action )
This seems to be what they are recommending: “Resuscitation facilities should be available at all times for all vaccinations. Vaccination should only be carried out in facilities where resuscitation measures are available.”
Perhaps it is time for the plan C? Bermuda isn’t going to change anything, despite more people testing positive and intends to keep its gates open for visitors and returning residents.
So what IS Plan C?
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-care-homes/fact-check-quote-about-covid-19-vaccine-in-care-homes-taken-out-of-context-idUSKBN28K2IO
CNS when will you stop publishing harmful comments made by antivaxxers? Other countries are considering legislating to stop this. The comment above is clearly fake news, as this link demonstrates. If you want people to be afraid of having the vaccine in Cayman, this is a great way to achieve that.
This guy is a typical anything for money and my career me me me why doesn’t he get on a plane and piss off we are so fed up of these self righteous entitled idiots go join Trump and get Covid … Sure his boss Dart doesn’t want Covid reason he stays put here these day
Dart isn’t his boss.
Bullshit. If you are in Cayman, Dart is your boss. It is just that not everyone has realized that yet.
Keep it closed, lives worth more 5han dollars.
covid-19 ———-> recovery rate over 99%
so you want to keep cayman closed and just wait for someone/companies to fail?
no place is a bubble, and this place is far away from being completely safe.
more than 1500 people locked in a hotel room or private homes, and no tracking, but breaches ?
no community transmission, REALLY?
I don’t think so 🤫
Lets be generous and use your 1% mortality rate (despite the fact that most countries are reporting closer to 2% mortality) you are essentially arguing lets open our borders and let the virus to spread unchecked which if the entire population caught the virus to 600 deaths at a minimum
Our community is relatively small and often hundreds of people maneuver through the same grocery stores and gas stations per day, how long do you think it would take this virus to rip through our community even with a mask mandate and restrictions?
It took us months to stop the spread from a few slip ups at the hospital and your smart idea is to allow a return to mass tourism?
Keeping in mind that the 1% mortality rate does not account whatsoever for the fact that according the WHO about 15% of Coronavirus patients become seriously ill and require oxygen (hospitalization) and 5% become critically ill and need intensive care (ventilation).
Where exactly do you suggest we care for the hundreds of people who would become seriously and critically ill in a country that has at most a few dozen ICU beds and a few dozen ventilators?
You do realize that as soon as those ICU beds are full and people cannot be ventilated or cared for that the mortality rate will skyrocket.
As the saying goes better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt
I really don’t understand CNS’s stance here apart from trying to make CITA look bad.
By their own comments here CITA have stated their first priority is in protecting the community from Covid 19. However the reality is that we will have vaccines here shortly protecting those who are most vulnerable to Covid 19 and that means by Easter we should be in a position where all vulnerable people will be protected.
It is therefore perfectly valid for CITA to be asking the question “What happens next” and pushing the government for answers as to how they intend to start opening up, something this government has failed to do from day 1 of this Panedemic.
The reason you see so many posts about government having no plan is that it’s true. They have no real strategy beyond the current one of keeping us closed off to the world and waiting it out.
The trouble is that the vaccines will not stop Covid quickly. It will be here for the next few years at a minimum and we need to start planning what we are going to do to live with it and deal with it.
When government closed off Cayman to international travel it was to protect those who were vulnerable to the virus. Those over 65 and with specific conditions. If the vaccines protect those people there is no reason to keep Cayman closed off to tourism generally and we will need a real plan about how we will gradually reduce restrictions to allow more and more visitors. It is time government engaged with CITA rather than ignored it, which is has done for the whole pandemic so far.
CNS is presenting facts. Any ‘looking bad’ that is occurring is self-inflicted.
What CITA needs to understand (because back-to-greed seems to be the real mission here) is that tourism in any country is an unstable industry.
Things can happen on a dime that disrupt it without warning (hurricanes, earthquakes, global economic depressions, and PANDEMICS).
The tourism cash cow doesn’t last forever, and anybody that thinks so is beyond delusional.
But given their collective stance on hiring primarily foreign non-Caymanian workers to staff their establishments (instead of the hard working tourism-sector Caymanians here before they came) in order to cut bottom-line costs and increase top-level and C-suite profits, all’s well that ends well.
They always claim poverty, threaten to leave but never do. Clearly we understand the dilemma of who really needs who. (What are they gonna do, can’t take the hotels and condominiums in cargo hold on their plane ride when they leave; starve these greed demons)
I implore them all to find another country that will put up with all of their riff-raff while stomping out locals in the process, and claim fair ball.
I say keep the borders closed until these money-grubbers learn their lesson and share with the local people. One hurting, we all should be.
As far as I am concerned, both CITA and CIREBA are both overrun with money-grubbing foreign opportunists and modern-day slave traders that don’t even care about the damage and uproar they leave in their wake. They will pull any dirty tricks and leverage out of the bag to get their way, sell Cayman to the highest bidder on the world stage without locals getting a fair share, and falsely show the international market a “holier than thou” masquerade to pad their private commissions fund. Marketing and failed business majors turned into realtors and developers. (We all know they are a dime a dozen elsewhere; find a new ruse that doesn’t involve uprooting livelihoods)
The Cayman Islands decided early in 2020 that dead customers are not repeat customers. I think that still holds true, especially looking at my intact healthy family, and while enjoying the freedoms we have. We didn’t want ANY risk, or to play this deadly game for short-sighted money. Happily, a very rare instance where Cayman Islands policy really out-shined that of any and all world-leading G-nation states.
Cayman Islands policy – close the borders, keep my full salary, keep being driven around in a Government car to see all the people using their pensions and savings to buy food – good policy
When are all tourism employees going to be vaccinated? Then, when are prospective guests going to be vaccinated?
A few weeks after vaccination, with proof they have been vaccinated (yes, including anyone who may be pregnant and children) then maybe they can come without quarantining. Maybe.
AND NO CRUISE SHIPS!
Now when are you going to start employing Caymanians in meaningful roles?
Did you actually read the article?
You first!
Exactly. But it will have to be a condition of any “safe” tourism.
If the CITA is going to commit to pay the health expenses and funeral arrangements for the inevitable hospitalisations and deaths from their suggestion to open the border (so they can make profits) then I will be happy to entertain their suggestions.
If the CITA is going to provide monetary compensation to the persons who will inevitably lose vulnerable family members due to their greed then I will be happy to entertain their suggestions.
If the CITA is going to provide incomes for the vulnerable persons like my mother who will have to return to locking themselves in their homes due to pre-existing conditions or being immunocompromised from the high risk that tourists (especially American tourists) will pose then I will be happy to entertain their ideas.
Otherwise I have no interest in hearing a single solitary thing they have to say.
People in tourism have always known their industry was at the mercy of global trends and events, whether they be economic downturns leading to reduced discretionary spending among consumers (e.g fewer persons participating in vacations and trips) or Hurricanes and other natural disasters and yes pandemics. It is unfortunate that this has happened but the second you start suggesting that my family be put at risk so that you can make a few bucks I lose every ounce of sympathy
for you, because you’ll have to forgive me but lives are worth more than selling knick knacks, filling boats and lining the pockets of foreign hoteliers.
People begged for years for the CIG to push diversifying the economy so that unfortunate incidents like this could be avoided and the Tourism industry has resisted that at every step, as far as I am concerned you all made your beds, and now you have to sleep in them.
An economy and industry can be revived at a later date, until the CITA has the ability or the power to revive a corpse their statements, plans and ideas are completely, totally and utterly irrelevant. Tourism will never be more important than protecting our own.
Look at what is currently going on in Bermuda who they were up until this point encouraging us to emulate, it only takes one reckless or dishonest tourist to put us all back into a 2 month lockdown or send dozens to the hospital or graves.
We do not have the capacity here to risk outbreak, when ICU beds are full they are full and we will have to start digging graves.
Will the CITA also like to expand their responsibilities to pallbearing and last rites?
Build our damn port!
How about get a real job.
Why doesn’t this idiot just shut up. Look at Bermuda, T&C, Jamaica etc.,opening up doesn’t benefit the people or Government. Hotels make money but people die and Government incurs more medical and preventative expenses than the hotels make so it’s a negative sum.
You again calling people idiots! Not nice.
Moron
2:44, Barbados, British Virgin Islands and St. Kitts are open for tourism now. Opening up is benefiting the people and Governments of those places. Are they all idiots there too?
Bet they would say there that you should just shut up. 😂 😆 😝
A tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Maybe Marc should consider moving to Bermuda, things are going really well over there.
https://www.royalgazette.com/health/news/article/20201210/covid-19-test-demand-surges-as-active-cases-reach-103/
And Sweden is proof that it is nothing more than a common cold.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-coronavirus-surge-alarm-stockholm-hospitals-herd-immunity-strategy-2020-12
Whilst I sympathize with people who work in the tourism industry, we have a local economy with around 80% of people working. Locals have supported our tourism industry where possible, staycations, eating out more, ordering in, boat trips but CITA will alienate the local population if they push to get the borders open and we all end up back in lockdown. Yes let’s follow Bermuda….. that’s all we’ve been hearing, Bermuda have got tourism back. Now where are Bermuda – going into Christmas with community spread, bars closed, restaurants closed, people wearing masks. We need the vaccine before we start allowing our borders to open any more than they are now.
Bermuda 🇧🇲
“ Even amid the latest outbreak, there are no new restrictions on incoming flights or movement of visitors arriving in Bermuda, other than a new requirement to wear a yellow ‘traveller wristband’ for 14 days.
Announcing that measure earlier this week, Health Minister Kim Wilson emphasised that the island was still very much open to tourism.
“I want to remind everyone that Bermuda’s borders are open and we continue to welcome visitors and our returning residents home,” she said.”
Apart from school closures, business closures, restriction of hours of places selling alcohol, and lets not forget the people now hospitalized and the 9 dead – you mean
Dave, look at Barbados. They seem to have it right with tourism opening. With a population of nearly 300,000 they are far bigger than us and have a lot more hotels.
80% ???? Where did you get that number from? So many people have left the island.
They got the number from fake ESO stats. Weve lost about 30% of the population that was on the brink of 100K but theyre fabulous accounting, as always, has 75k minusXxx, plusxxx, minus$##”^&….ewuals 65k. Uh huh.
No they haven’t. In fact the population (and the number of work permits) has been growing since the summer.
I understand his desperation … but no, not yet with what is going on in Cayman’s number one tourism market. Maybe by late spring.