The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

TOURISM Minister Dionisio D’Aguilar says he hopes the United States will soon change its decision to warn residents not to travel to this country.

While the US State Department has dropped its advisory for Americans from Level Four to Level Three, the Centres for Disease Control has issued a Level Four advisory, warning its residents against travel here because it could increase their chances of getting and spreading the COVID-19.

Mr D’Aguilar said yesterday: “This is no change from what was said by the US government in July, so this situation has been in effect from July. It’s all about timing. When they released the July travel order at the end of July, it was very unfortunate, because that’s at the end of June, we’d been doing so remarkably well in terms of our management of the COVID pandemic.

“And once again this is a matter of timing. At the end of October we had not been doing terribly well, here we are a month later doing better. So we’re hoping that the Americans see fit to do a reassessment as they see our numbers improve and see fit to change that rating.

“Obviously it is concerning, but as I said it’s a function of timing… and this is why it’s important for the Bahamian public to do what they need to do. Please don’t party, please don’t congregate, because if you contribute to a spike in numbers, this rating, or this warning will persist. And we are heading in the right direction, our numbers are coming down, and this will then lead to a change in that travel advisory so we need the Bahamian people to do their part.”

Mr D’Aguilar noted that the state of COVID-19 in the US is worse than here.

“There is no doubt that the effect of COVID, the death rate, the positivity rate, in The Bahamas, is half that in the United States so it’s much better here than there,” he said. “However, they will always respond that you can issue travel advisories, we can issue travel advisories, so there’s no point in fighting that, we just have to improve and continue to improve our numbers and ensure that we keep our numbers respectable so they then see fit to change that rating. “Obviously we depend on the United States for almost all of our tourists, so it’s very, very important that in their eyes we change our status or level of community spread because if they change that rating that will be a positive result for The Bahamas.”