The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

We’re now a day away from July 1. Let’s try to carefully think about what’s going on.

The US is clearly our biggest visitor market, but COVID has made a comeback in the states at a rapid rate. California, Texas and especially Florida are now the most contaminated states included in the spike in cases.

However, we’re not certain about this reopening of air travel. It’s now too dangerous to have US flights to and from the Bahamas, and even more dangerous to allow flights from Florida. Even with the fourteen day testing and quarantine protocols, we don’t have the equipment or enough personnel to effectively test numerous American travellers. The Bahamas can’t stay closed and we can’t handle a similar spike in COVID-19 cases with our small hospitals.

This is now the time to be the brave and the bold. We can’t tolerate the failure that Trump has allowed for the US to become the home for COVID-19.

The only sane decision that we can make is not only stopping flights from Florida and Houston, but all flights to and from the US and allowing no non-essential American travellers into the country completely, as well as from China with the same thing. We should change our destination markets accordingly.

Largely, the European Union has also frozen all flights to and from the US as a failsafe with the cases in their countries slowing down and descending, and the Indo-Pacific region outside of China is one of the regions with the lowest active COVID cases being recorded in South Korea, Japan and Australia (In fact, New Zealand has no active cases). These are the regions we need for our tourism market to stay afloat.

By all means, we need to expand and improve our own tourism product to meet their expectations. First; the airport has to be expanded with larger jet gates, longer runways and two more terminals with further modernisation of infrastructure. Bay Street must be revived in the night and with the old half of the street being restored with new businesses without much of the Chinese workers or investors. The hotels will have to also offer more activities and rooms and the family islands must follow suit to improve the market. In fact, we can have bigger diplomatic relations with the new countries we’re dealing with in tourism.

If the Trump administration is consistent in denying the facts about his failed COVID-19 response and intervention, then we must do what we can to stop the spike of COVID-19, even if we put a decade-long moratorium on non-essential US travellers. It’s not a cruel tactic or switching allegiance to the Chinese or Russians, it’s about standards and order.

In a nutshell, we don’t have to bankrupt ourselves or cause a spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Britain, the European Union and most of the Indo-Pacific region has the virus under control and is our best third option to keep the Bahamas alive and financially healthy.

AMMAKA RUSSELL

Nassau,

June 30, 2020