Speaking at the recent meeting with stakeholders from the transportation-for-hire industry, the resident said most other arrivals are allowed to enter without being tagged with any monitoring system.

“I think there’s a little issue there where you (persons who haven’t tested positive) get to leave the port. You go straight home. There’s no tracking app on your phone there. No bracelets or anything like what we were doing before. So, I think that’s a little hole that we might have to look at the plug,” the resident said.

Complacency in enforcing safety protocols?

The resident also questioned why it appeared as though the territory had become complacent with its enforcement of protocols such as mask-wearing.

“I feel like whether you’re vaccinated or not, we need to really be focusing on sanitary protocols; safety protocols. We need to really be enforcing wearing your mask, social distancing, and really driving those points home because whether you’re vaccinated or not, it still is possible for you to catch and spread the virus and I think that’s where us as a whole community became complacent to be honest because some people started to feel like, ‘oh, I took the vaccine. So, I’m immortal’.”

He said local officials need to drive home the point that those everyday safety protocols for COVID-19 are effective.

He further suggested that residents need to allow ships to return to the territory with that understanding in mind.

“So, we have to work with this thing, live with it, push the protocols, allow the ships to come in and people have to make up their mind that this is how life is going to be,” the resident said.

He continued: “It would never go back to how it was pre-COVID no time soon. That’s just my take because we can’t just lose out on all these, you know, millions of dollars for the foreseeable future. That would be basically suicide; economic suicide.”

Government adjusted entry protocols

Meanwhile, Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Ronald Georges explained that the government’s entry protocols had previously been adjusted for certain travellers.

According to Dr Georges, Cabinet had made a decision to allow vaccinated tourists or vaccinated travellers to enter the territory. And at one point in time, they weren’t being tested but that move coincided with the cruise ships coming in.

He said after the BVI experienced a spike in cases, vaccinated persons who were coming in began to receive rapid tests.

“So, you would come in, you’d have the rapid test. If you’re negative, you go. So, in that scenario, you won’t get a band and you won’t enter quarantine if you did test rapid test positive on entry, then, you would get a band and be quarantined and await your PCR results which if positive, then, you’d go through that process for a positive person if negative and it was a false rapid test positive, then you’ll be you’ll continue to be released,” Dr Georges explained.