A release from the CARICOM Secretariat following the talks said the leaders recognised “the need for a common protocol for the reopening of regional airports to flights from selected third countries and the reopening of hotels”.
It’s for this reason that they appointed the St Lucia prime minister, Allen Chastanet, to head a subcommittee to meet with all Caribbean tourism stakeholders “to settle the appropriate protocols needed to ensure safety for workers and visitors upon reopening of the sector”.
While this is not the first time that Chastanet has been known to stray from CARICOM positions – the meeting with the US president, Donald Trump, which Jamaica’s Andrew Holness also attended, is one such example – the CARICOM leaders’ rationale for a July reopening was to allow for the agreement and implementation of health protocols, something Antigua has made much of a dog’s dinner of.
Of concern to CARICOM is the fact that both St Lucia and Antigua have said they are opening to US visitors only, even though at press time there were 5.9 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 370,000 deaths globally, with the US alone accounting for 1.75 million cases and 103,000 deaths, making it the worst affected country in the world, both in terms of the number of cases and the number of deaths.
However, he said if any of these allowed visitors from countries to which St Maarten remained closed, residents from these neighbouring states would be barred from entering the Dutch Caribbean country.
