JAMAICA — Airline and cruise-ship visitors to Jamaica may be required to present medical certificates of a negative COVID-19 test in order to enter the island when the country reopens its borders for tourism, the Jamaica Gleaner reported on May 14.
The medical certificate, which should be no older than 76 hours, is among a number of proposed protocols now on the table for implementation.
All airline passengers departing Jamaica should also be tested prior to boarding and their temperature checked by thermal scanners. If their temperatures are above normal, they will be denied boarding.
Pressed on tourists’ risk of contracting the coronavirus disease in transit between airports, Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton was coy.
“We are working on the protocol. … We have protocols now, but those are being reviewed in light of the new public-health threat … . What I would encourage is to just hold a bit until protocols are established,” the minister said at a virtual press briefing on Wednesday evening.
But Chief Medical Officer Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie sought to pooh-pooh the quality of testing regimes in some countries, emphasising that many of those evaluations were being culled by subpar rapid kits.
The test results are not reliable, one, and two, the tests speak about now. So if a person is incubating a virus, then they may very well have a negative test and then two days later, when they are in the country, they develop symptoms,” Bisasor-McKenzie said.
The team tasked with fine-tuning the strategies that must comport with international travel and tourism standards has also suggested that the walkway leading to security scanners be sanitised after each person passes through.
Floor markers are also to be installed to maintain social distancing while handwashing stations and pedal-openable bins are to be set up at all entrances.
It is unclear whether the new travel protocols for visitors will be finalised in time for the reopening of major hotels, such as Sandals Resorts International (SRI) and Moon Palace Ocho Rios, which had initially announced resumption dates of June 4 and June 1, respectively. See full report in the Jamaica Gleaner at http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20200514/tourists-may-need-covid-passport
