Vaccine or negative test needed for travel to CB&LC

| 20/09/2021 | 24 Comments
Cayman News Service
Cayman Brac Airport

(CNS): Anyone travelling from Grand Cayman to Cayman Brac or Little Cayman will now need to be either vaccinated or have a negative PCR test. Government has rolled out new rules in the wake of community spread in Grand Cayman in an effort to protect the Sister Islands. Those who have not been fully vaccinated for at least two weeks must provide a negative PCR test certificate from an approved laboratory that was done no more than 48 hours prior to departure.

There is no change for inter-island travel from Grand Cayman to the Sister Islands for verifiable vaccinated individuals. The regulations were published Monday and apply to those travelling by boat as well as flying.

Anyone who arrives in the Sister Islands from Grand Cayman who shows respiratory symptoms or symptoms of the virus will be quarantined until the person is no longer a risk to the public.

Those who are required to isolated on the Sister Islands after having travelled from Grand Cayman will be liable for any costs associated with the quarantine facility unless they are a returning student or can demonstrate their travel to the Brac or Little Cayman was government-related, a sporting-event related as part of a national team, for medical purpose, travel relating to education, as part of responsibility for taking a child or an adult away for medical purpose or other essential reason.

In addition to new rules surroudning travel to the Brac, the government had reduced the number of people allowed on boats from 500 to 50 or to half of the legal capacity of vessel, whichever is smaller.

Government is also due to roll out regulations shortly to address crowd limits.

The increased COVID-19 suppression measures follow the decision to pause the transition from Phase 3 to Phase 4 of the Cayman Islands’ border reopening plan earlier this week. This was in reaction to the first transmission in the community for more than four hundred days earlier this month and the increased public concern this has caused.

“This pause gives us an opportunity to strengthen some of our controls so that we reduce the likelihood of a surge of COVID-19 cases that puts lives and all commerce at risk,” Premier Wayne Panton on Friday. “Once we go through this process, government will have a better sense of the way forward and our citizens may have increased confidence in our local ability to re-join the wider world.”

See the regulations here.


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Category: Health, Medical Health

Comments (24)

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  1. George says:

    If you are vacinated you can still spread covid. Why would you not test all people going to brac ????
    This makes no sense.

  2. Why says:

    It would be interesting to learn how many persons are of the belief that the vaccination prevents an individual from contracting or spreading the virus.

    Vaccination does NOT make a person immune to Covid-19 and neither does it protect persons from spreading the virus to others.

    It baffles me why having the vaccination is as readily accepted for travel to the Brac and Little Cayman as a negative PCR test.

  3. Anonymous says:

    The anti-vax tin hats still insist that the vax causes a myriad of side effects and death in SOOO many of the people who get vaxed. In light of over 104,000 doses being administered here, and in light of the recent rush to get The Jab because of the community spread panic, our hospitals should be showing an increase in business due to serious illness. And our funeral homes should be doing brisk business according to the tin hats. Neither is the case. I was one of those tin hats not too long ago, but the last two stats brought me to reality: I was orders of magnitude more likely to be hospitalised or die by Covid (which will become endemic in these islands and the world) than I am to become seriously ill or die of the vax. The tin hats parrot anti-vax tripe that is being spewed by purveyors of BS in the USA. Let’s see some of you tin hats give us numbers about the place that is relevant to those if us who live in the Cayman Islands! Excess serious illness? Excess deaths? Here in Cayman? Show me!

  4. Anonymous says:

    There goes our little staycation money. I have lost all my guests now for the next month. Looks like I will have to apply for government assistance… hope I qualify as a tourism related industry.

  5. Anonymous says:

    And exactly how much of these new regulations are ‘Science based’?

    None. Like most (if not all ) of these recent knee-jerk reactionary, flip-floppy changes the Government has decided on for some random, unfathomable, unknown reason.

  6. Anonymous says:

    a plan with more holes than swiss cheese….
    the pact circus rolls on….

    • Anonymous says:

      Lord help us with these regulations they coming up with on the fly. No logic or foresight at all!

  7. Anonymous says:

    negative test means nothing….
    why not do what biden and every other major country is doing…. no vaccine=no entry. people will soon get the message.

    • Anonymous says:

      You got it backwards. Vaccine means nothing and negative test is only real proof you don’t have it and won’t spread it.

      • Anonymous says:

        11:00 I agree with some of that statement but.. The fact is the vaccine is helping to keep millions of persons from DEATH! That means alot!. But true that a negative test at the time means that you most likely dont have and wont spread, but that doesnt mean it will not develop over the course of a few days (whilst you are “visiting”), in which time you then become sick and then potentially spread. This is true for both vaccinated and unvaccinated persons, with the vaccinated persons PROVEN to have less severe ILLNESS and DEATH!. Come one people we should all know this by now!

  8. Anonymous says:

    Did I read this correctly, that travelers to the sister islands require “… either to be vaccinated or have a negative PCR test.”? So has something changed or are vaccinated folks still able to be infected and spread the virus? Are the vaccinated now immune and no longer pose such danger? Just asking …

    • Kirstie Johnson says:

      Exactly. It makes no sense whatsoever. This will hurt the Brac economy. I was planning to visit but after this I’m not interested and I’m sure others will feel the same. Over regulation complicates things.

      • Anonymous says:

        It makes a lot of sense if your elderly parents, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, cousins and friends are alive in well in that “big ole elderly persons rest home that is the Brac”.

        Consider the age profile there Kirstie, many persons there are too old or sickly to even qualify for the vaccine much less be exposed unnecessarily to the disease.

        Can you consider that human side of the issue as well, Kirstie?

  9. Pointa says:

    I think this is uncalled for! We need all the visitors and business over here that we can get! Please PACT just stick with protocols for all three islands and make us have our freedom of moving back and forth between our islands! We all just need to be safe! You don’t need a PCR to go from Westbay to Eastend right????? Having said that.. if you feel sick don’t fly, stay home, don’t need to spread to anyone or anywhere, but we will have to live with this.

    • Beaumont Zodecloun says:

      …because people can’t be trusted to do the right thing for others; they can only be trusted to do the right thing for themselves.

      • Anonymous says:

        Yeah like all the rich foreigners that have homes here that come get the vaccine free from our islands, Then run back and forth to the US at will! Like they can’t bring it here just as easy coming straight from MIA. Its ok for them to self quarantine on the Brac, breaking the rules, for 5 days (now 7) but our local people have to be restricted to move on a domestic flight from the mainland that has a few cases of Covid?

  10. Anonymous says:

    This only hurts the Sister Islands and the people who live there.

    • Anonymous says:

      Not really. There have been some amazing stay-cationers who have been spending time on the Brac, and tourism-related businesses are happy to have the money. Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of “guests” from Grand who don’t seem to be happy on the Brac unless they stay drunk, loud and disgusting. Wish we had a vaccine for that.

  11. Burning Spear says:

    Autonomous state of Cayman Brac da way unnah get for trying to infect our sisters and brothers in Da Brac Tek Wood lockdown !

  12. Anonymous says:

    What about travel in the opposite direction?

    • Anonymous says:

      The rationale for tighter restriction for travel *into* Cayman Brac is the higher percentage of at-risk elderly, coupled with the extremely limited capacity and resources at Faith Hospital to handle seriously ill Covid cases. Cayman Brac has been free of community spread Covid for a very long time, so the risk of Covid spread due to travel from CYB to GCM is virtually nil.

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