(CMC) — The Caribbean COVID-19 Tourism Task Force is calling for continued diligence and adherence to public health safety protocols as it encourages tourism-related stakeholders, who are able to do so, to be vaccinated as vaccines become available.
The task force said that the Caribbean has generally been successful in containing the virus over the past year to levels below what is being experienced in many parts of the world. COVID-19 infection, hospitalisation, and death rates are among the lowest in the world.
“This has been attributed to the early and ongoing response by many Caribbean governments, health care and tourism industry leaders, and the large number of Caribbean residents who have adhered to health safety protocols.
“The Task Force cautions that now is not the time to “let down our guard”, as the next several months will determine how quickly the tourism-dependent region will be able to rebound. Tourism is viewed by many as the catalyst for getting people back to work and restoring much needed revenue that governments have lost due to the pandemic,” it said.
Executive director of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), Dr Joy St John, said that “we are now in a race against time, particularly given the presence of variants which spread more rapidly, we must adhere to health safety protocols lest we find ourselves moving backwards, rather than forwards”.
“We must remain diligent while we continue to accelerate vaccinations of our populations, now that approved vaccines are becoming more available,” she said.
“We urge countries to continue to intensify their surveillance activities to rapidly screen, identify, test, quarantine, isolate and trace contacts of new cases; and for every resident and visitor to the Caribbean to do their part through physical/social distancing, wearing of masks, and practicing proper hand hygiene,” she advised, speaking on behalf of the task force.
The task force was established over a year ago to develop and collaborate on strategies and programs aimed at helping to share information; develop health safety protocols and guidelines for the tourism industry to protect employees and travellers; conduct health safety training; monitor and minimise COVID-19 incidents in the tourism industry; and advocate for sound health safety practices and the harmonisation of said practices.
Through the agency’s efforts, more than 5,000 hotels and tourism-related managers and supervisors have undergone CARPHA-led health safety training, which has reached thousands more who have been trained by the initial graduates.
The task force member organisations include CARPHA, the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), and the Jamaica-based Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Center (GTRCMC).
