The COVID-19 ‘CARICOM Bubble’, which had been considered for implementation in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) from August 1st, has not been implemented. This country’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Simone Keizer Beache while appearing on VC3’s Roundtable Talk gave an explanation as why.
“On that protocol it said, that we would use the period of July to determine what we would do in August. It was going to depend on the number of cases we got from other Caribbean countries; it was going to depend on what was happening in those Caribbean countries in terms of Covid.” Dr. Beache said.
The CMO went on to state that other Caribbean countries reopening their borders factored into the decision, specifically the fact that those countries accepted flights from the US.
“So you might have a country accepting two or three flights from the USA in particular within a week and that increases their baseline risk and therefore we came to the conclusion that we will not be proceeding to that no test no quarantine for those CARICOM countries, rather we will ask them to produce a PCR test.”
