Caribbean turns to India, China for vaccines to revive tourism
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Caribbean is hunting for visitors and vaccines to jump-start the economy in one of the world’s most tourism-dependent regions.
Clear waters and warm sand attracted a record 31.5 million tourists to the Caribbean in 2019, but visits plummeted by an estimated 60% to 80% as the pandemic hit last year. That’s devastating for a region whose countries depend heavily on visitors for income.
“Many countries prefer hurricanes compared to what has happened with the pandemic,” said Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, a former Bahamian tourism minister who also led the Caribbean Tourism Organization.
Tens of thousands of tourismrelated jobs were lost, including those held by Nadia Kidd and her mother in Jamaica. Kidd, 31, was a waitress at a resort and her mother worked at a guest house. Kidd, like many other workers, has yet to receive her severance pay and now runs a tiny grocery store out of her home to support her mother and daughter.
“Everything is all on me,” said Kidd, who worked at the Meliá Braco Village resort in Trelawny. “I have loans to pay, light bill and internet [that I] have to pay because my daughter has to go to school online.”
Desperate to create safe conditions for tourism, the Caribbean is turning to India and China for vaccines at a time when global supplies are strained and richer nations are ahead in line for shots from other sources. A few have been fortunate to get quick shipments, while others could wait weeks, if not months.
The Caribbean saw COVID-19 levels rising in November, along with variants feared to be more contagious. More than 522,000 cases and more than 7,500 deaths have been reported in 35 of the region’s countries and territories.
“The rate of increase has been alarming,” said Dr. Joy St. John, executive director of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency.
The small nations adopted a variety of anti-virus measures, nearly all requiring visitors at a minimum to show recent negative tests upon arrival.
Cuba — the largest Caribbean nation and the only one working on its own vaccines — choked off arrivals after seeing infections surge. It requires visitors to stay in designated hotels and to take new tests upon landing.
International travellers to St. Kitts and Nevis must stay at certain hotels, and St. Eustatius requires visitors to register their reason for travelling before giving approval.
Many islands ask visitors to isolate, though how long and under what conditions can vary: Those arriving in the Cayman Islands or Barbados must stay inside a hotel for at least a week or face jail. Others, like Puerto Rico, don’t require quarantine if a negative test is presented upon arrival.
Aruba, Anguilla, Curacao and Montserrat and others have promoted themselves as havens for those who can work by internet from a room by the sea, although officials can be harsh on visitors who flout virus restrictions.
At least 13 countries in the region have signed up for the World Health Organization’s COVAX program, created to ensure access to COVID-19 shots for low- and middleincome countries.
Among those is Jamaica, which had pursued an aggressive reopening to tourism despite not receiving a single shipment of vaccines. On Sunday, however, it announced it was closing public beaches and rivers until March 22.
Its government says it expects to receive 50,000 vaccines from India this week and 14,400 AstraZeneca vaccines next week via the COVAX program. It also anticipates receiving 1.8 million vaccine doses by April via the African Medical Supply Platform, a non-profit initiative by the African Union.
Despite those pending vaccines, Alica Brown said she would not return to the tourism industry. The 34-year-old has not found a job since she was laid off last year as a supervisor at a resort, forcing her to move in with her family and dip into her savings.
“No job is safe, especially tourism jobs, because when something like this happens, and tourists cannot travel, how will we survive?” said Brown, who is considering a venture into farming.