Anguilla’s
borders have been closed to visitor traffic since mid-March 2020 because of the
Covid-19 pandemic. Hotels and villas
have had to close, and staff have been let go.
The island economy has collapsed.
Both employers and employees are close to the limit of what they can
bear. Government revenue has shrunk to
half the budgeted amount. Public
expenses, meanwhile, have more than doubled.
Some
of the villa owners are pressuring government to begin opening Anguilla up to
tourist arrivals. In a memo of 23 July
from the Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association to its members, there is a
suggestion that villa owners and their guests be allowed in by private jet or
charter from 1 August. This is to be a
soft opening preliminary to a full opening of the tourism plant this coming
winter.
I
have some thoughts on the suggestion that we now pull the plug on the measures
that have kept us safe.
Covid-19
continues to rage throughout the world, including both the USA, our main
catchment area, and Antigua, Puerto Rico and St Maarten, the hubs through which
our airline passengers arrive. The USA
has the worst statistics for the disease in the entire world.
Canada
and other countries that depend on tourism are not permitting anyone from the
USA to enter their countries. The USA is
Europe’s biggest tourism market. The
Europeans have banned US tourists even as they open to other visitors.
Anguilla’s
main defence against widespread sickness, hospitalisation and death is the
availability of a safe and effective vaccine.
The likelihood is that there will not be such a vaccine this year. The earliest would be eighteen months from
the date the research institutes began to work on vaccines, ie, January
2020. If so, this means that we cannot
realistically expect to have a vaccine for Covid-19 before July 2021. It follows that the earliest we should be
considering reopening Anguilla’s borders to tourist arrivals is winter
2021. Anything before that will almost inevitably
result in our being re-infected and having to close our ports and our hotels
again.
Under
President Trump’s misguided leadership over the past six months, the virus has
been allowed to rampage through the USA.
Why would Anguilla let any US resident in before mid-2021 when they are
so evidently careless about their health?
What do they care about our health if they care so little about their
own? It would be different if we were to
allow in tourists from countries where they had suppressed the Covid-19
epidemic. But, to allow into Anguilla
visitors from the USA currently is unimaginable to me.
If
we do open our ports for guests of villa owners, will we be able to make them take
the necessary health precautions? Will visitors
be made to produce a Covid test result that is not more than three days old
showing they are clear, or be sent back on the plane they arrived on? If they turn out later to be infected, will
we be able to make them self-quarantine for 14 days? Do we have the means or the will to police a
quarantine? These are rich and
“entitled” people who are accustomed to buying their way out of any situation.
If
any of them later turns up positive, we shall have to trace all their contacts
and confine them to quarantine if we are to stop social spread of the
virus. Do we have adequate amounts of
testing equipment? Do we have the
capability to produce timely results?
Are our health personnel trained in contact tracing? Do we have the resources to conduct a proper
tracing programme, and to enforce the resulting quarantines?
What
about our stocks of Personal Protective Equipment? Will our supplies of masks be adequate before
the borders are opened? Do we have the
gowns and other PPE needed for the medical staff? Do we have the latest models of ventilators
for when we are committed to the Intensive Care Unit? Do all the villas have adequate stocks of PPE
in advance of opening for the use of staff and guests in appropriate
circumstances? Will our villa staff be
trained in the correct use of this PPE prior to opening?
If
we admit in visitors from the USA, and as is inevitable, the virus catches and
begins to spread in Anguilla, we shall be obliged to lock the island down again
for a couple more months at least, until it is contained.
Of
course, repatriation of Anguillian nationals from any country remains a
continuing necessity. Fortunately, the testing
and quarantine protocols and safeguards put in place by the Health Department for
dealing with repatriated Anguillians are now well practised. Such repatriations have not resulted in any
local spread of the virus since the first three cases in March.
It
is arguable that the last administration suffered politically, and lost the June
general election, at least partly because they chose health over economic
interests. They totally closed the
island to visitors in March. Our borders
are still closed today. The result was
they limited Covid-19 cases in Anguilla to three mild ones in March. We are free of infection today. But the previous administration suffered
serious political damage. Many
businesses closed, some permanently, and large numbers of us became
unemployed. Schools closed, and the
children struggled with distance learning.
Opening
our borders to visitors from a country where the infection is surging out of
control will likely destroy all that our sacrifice has accomplished. Is the present government prepared for the
political backlash that will follow if they allow the virus back in to flourish
for the sake of a few villa owners’ financial interests?
If
we open the island to US visitors, we can expect numbers of us, not only to be
committed to the ICU, but to die. What
answer will the administration give our families when they are accused of
opening before the USA could flatten its own curve? Are they ready to deal with the accusation
that they allowed the villa owners to kill us off?
Other
than for a short period in August, July to November are dead months for tourism
in Anguilla. It is the Hurricane
season. This is the low season for West
Indian tourism. Why open the island in
this quiet period when there will be few or no tourists (other than the highly
risky ones from the USA) coming by air or by sea to Anguilla? Opening our borders to tourists of any kind now
will contribute hardly a penny to either government revenue or to the economy. There is no real economic point in reopening
before late November or early December.
Are
the Anguillian public prepared to deal with a new surge? We have been safe for so long that we now all
ignore the social distancing rules we used to practise in March. People lean on shop counters, despite the
printed signs; stand in line in the supermarket pressed up against each other,
despite the spacing marks on the floor; and not one of us wears a mask in
public. When we let in tourists, we will
need to relearn the social distancing precautions. Will our health authorities engage us
citizens in an intense social distancing revision course in the months before
we let in tourists?
Finally,
as Dr Fauci reminds us, we must ask what is the recommendation of the Health
Authority? What is the expert advice our
Ministry of Tourism has received? Is the
recommendation that it is safe to let in visitors to villas from the USA? Or should we wait until after a safe and
effective vaccine is generally available?
Later
on Friday, I was pleased to see what amounted to a
Government response to the AHTA initiative on behalf of villa owners. This was a press release titled “Covid 19
Update 13”. It advised that Anguilla’s
borders will remain closed until 31 October.
An exception is made for visitors from countries with active cases of
less than 0.2% of the population, who will be allowed into Anguilla on
condition. They must comply with all
relevant protocols and quarantine regulations.
That rules out visitors from the USA.
The US (with 4% of the world’s population and 25% of all Covid-19
infections) cannot meet the less than 0.2% benchmark. We all anxiously await the arrival of a safe
and effective vaccine. I need not have
worried. No doubt, it helped that we
have a physician as Premier.
24 July 2020
Revised 27 July
