Bahamas allows U.S. travelers again — with a 14-day quarantine
The Bahamas has reversed course on closing its border to U.S. travelers over surging coronavirus infections in both nations.
Less than a week after Prime Minister Hubert Minnis announced the closure of the tourism-dependent nation’s borders to commercial air and sea visitors from the United States, the attorney general said Friday all international visitors are now welcome.
But visitors should be prepared to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival — at their own expense — in a government facility and take a real time polymerase chain reaction COVID-19 laboratory test at the end of isolation.
The news of the reversal was first broken by the Nassau Guardian in a Friday editorial, “New orders, new questions.” The newspaper’s reporters noticed Wednesday that an item tabled in Parliament on visitors was vastly different from the travel ban Minnis announced Sunday. During a national address, Minnis told Bahamians that a surging number of coronavirus infections since the country fully reopened its borders on July 1 demanded “decisive action, if we are to avoid being overrun and defeated by this virus.”
“We cannot allow our hospitals to be overrun. Many priorities must be balanced, be they health, social and economic,” Minnis said.
Hours after Friday’s Nassau Guardian editorial, Attorney General Carl Bethel confirmed the change in a press statement that didn’t offer a reason for the reversal.
“The provisions governing the admission of foreign visitors to The Bahamas were changed in order to create a uniform standard of treatment for all Visitors to The Bahamas during this Pandemic Emergency,” the statement said. “The creation of a uniform framework means that there is no longer any need to create any list of countries from which The Bahamas would accept commercial flights; which list thereby excluded other countries.”
The new emergency orders do not say what the entry requirements are for visitors on pleasure craft or private or chartered aircraft, which under the travel ban were allowed to still visit as long as they had proof of a negative COVID-19 test. Tourists from Canada, Europe and the United Kingdom on commercial flights were also still allowed.