The Tribune

* 'Apologises' for COVID test regime disruption

* And admits Gov't under-estimated complexity

* Visa site attracts 'spam', card issuer scrutiny

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Cabinet minister yesterday said the domestic travel visa will "roll-out by Friday at the latest" as he admitted the Government had "absolutely" under-estimated the COVID-19 testing regime's complexity.

Dionisio D'Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation, told Tribune Business he wished to "apologise to the Bahamian people" for any disruption caused by implementing a virus testing and tracing regime that could be "very inconvenient, very irritating and very annoying" for travellers to comply with.

He argued, though, that The Bahamas had little choice but to adopt such protocols if it wished to restore its tourism industry - the country's main source of jobs, economic activity and foreign exchange earnings - to at least partial health amid the global pandemic.

Arguing that the testing strategy was already "yielding positive results", as it had encouraged both Atlantis and Baha Mar to confirm December re-opening dates and the return to work of some 4,500 combined employees between the two properties, Mr D'Aguilar said there was still sufficient time to resolve the information technology (IT) "kinks" before visitors return en masse.

He admitted that it had been "a very rough two weeks" putting the IT support network for COVID-19 testing, tracing and compliance in place, as it was "something very new and different for the Ministry of Tourism" to handle, and said: "The vaccine can't come soon enough."

Mr D'Aguilar revealed that sending out hundreds of e-mails from a new website, and suddenly accepting multiple credit card payments related to the Health Travel Visa, had also attracted scrutiny from those fearing it was "a centre of spam" and/or facilitating a payments scam, resulting in more problems that had to be overcome.

The minister spoke out after Dr Hubert Minnis revealed that the reimposition of the 14-day quarantine for all persons travelling from New Providence to the Family Islands, just 48 hours after this was supposed to be scrapped, resulted from the domestic travel visa not being ready.

The move, unveiled late on Tuesday night, sparked consternation in the domestic aviation industry with some operators aghast at what they called a "flip-flop". They argued that the constant changes in the COVID-19 protocols were making it impossible to provide the correct advice to potential passengers, thereby threatening the sector with more instability.

The sudden switch also threatened to throw the travel plans of many Bahamians into confusion with the Christmas season fast approaching, and again reduce passenger load factors on domestic routes to a bare minimum for Bahamasair and private aviation operators.

Mr D'Aguilar, though, said the domestic travel visa - which will facilitate the 14-day quarantine's elimination, replacing it with more frequent testing - should be in place by Friday. Speaking ahead of last night's imposition of tighter restrictions on Exuma, he said: "I've been assured it will be ready to roll on Friday; that's my goal.

"Trying to roll-out all of the technology is quite taxing on the programmers. They've been rolling out the Health Travel Visa [for inbound visitors and returnees to The Bahamas]. That's caused a lot of growing pains, and consumed a lot of programming time.

"Then we have to roll-out the five-day rapid antigen test and send reminders to persons in the country for more than five days. Then you have to make sure everybody has the test, and determine who had and did not take it. Then you have to review the test, while also rolling out the online questionnaire."

Mr D'Aguilar was backed by the Prime Minister, who in his address on Exuma, said: "Yesterday, the Government reimplemented the 14-day quarantine requirement for travellers from New Providence to the Family Islands.

"This requirement will be in place for a short period of time only. We anticipate that it will be lifted once the domestic health screening survey is implemented, consistent with the international health screening survey."

Travellers are supposed to complete a questionnaire daily as part of a self-assessment process to determine whether they are showing any COVID-19 symptoms, and Mr D'Aguilar said the IT platform being constructed by his ministry also needed to address cases where such signs were reported.

"You have to build infrastructure. You have to build all that reporting and follow up, and you also have to build the domestic travel visa," Mr D'Aguilar added. He suggested the latter would be "fairly straightforward", requiring just the uploading of an identity document and negative COVID-19 PCR test taken within five days before travelling.

"With all the technology roll-outs you never have enough time to test it," the minister said. "You have to rush it, roll it out and deal with the bumps as that come with it. It's been a very rough two weeks getting this up and running.

"When you dig into the weeds and drill down into the moving parts, it's extremely complex and time consuming. Viewed from 50,000 feet, it's easy to say do a five-day test and upload the results, but you have to build the network for testing."

In particular, Mr D'Aguilar said rolling-out the five-day antigen test across multiple islands had been especially challenging. Besides finding locations and providers to administer the test, reminders had to be sent to those taking it, with mechanisms developed for results to be uploaded to the Ministry of Tourism's platform, assessed and then follow-up with the subjects if they test positive.

"If you send all those e-mails out to people, you run the risk of being targeted as a centre of spam," Mr D'Aguilar said, detailing further complications. "You also have to build in a payment system, and getting all that sorted out is never easy. The credit card companies noticed an increase in card activity with the health travel visa side, so they were naturally concerned and declined the cards.

"We're working with them on that. Don't get me wrong, all this infrastructure is definitely an impediment to travel, so we're trying to make it as seamless and easy to use as we can using technology. We're working through all our problems...

"This is something very new and very different for the Ministry of Tourism. Some would argue that it shouldn't be in the Ministry of Tourism, but I thought it important that the Health Travel Visa be embedded with us for a number of reasons," the minister continued.

"If there's a problem you want someone trained, understanding and empathetic with the traveller, particularly in communicating with people in different scenarios. It's very important we control that messaging. We're probably the agency of government most motivated to get it right. We're not quite there yet, but are pushing to get it right."