St Vincent and the Grenadines (iWitness News SVG) – In 2020, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the rest of the Caribbean region were wary of allowing tourists to enter because they were bringing COVID-19 into the region.
Now, those same tourists, having been vaccinated against the virus, are wary of coming to the region because of the low vaccination rate, says Minister of Finance, Camillo Gonsalves.
“We have been able to argue in the past that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is safe in terms of crime, it’s safe in terms of other types of disease, you can walk at night, you can leave your car open and these sorts of things. But we will not be able to argue honestly, currently, that we are safe in terms of COVID and it is going to be a disadvantage until we address it. It is as simple as that,” Gonsalves said on WE FM on Sunday.
Speaking on Issue at Hand, the finance minister spoke of the protocols that Minister of Tourism Carlos James and his team has put in place so that cruise ships would feel comfortable coming to SVG.
“Because the last thing a cruise ship wants — remember all the bad press that cruise ships got at the beginning of COVID, ‘these floating ships full of COVID passengers’ — is to leave port with all their passengers COVID negative and have one of their passengers pick up COVID on a trip and spread it at the buffet table on the cruise ship. They don’t want that.”
