Gay Nagle Myers
The recent CDC testing requirement is the latest challenge facing the tourism industry in the Caribbean.
The bottom line for U.S. travelers vacationing in the Caribbean: After Jan. 26, proof of a negative Covid test (PCR or antigen) taken no more than three days prior to boarding their return flight to the U.S. will be required. Anyone who has tested positive for Covid-19 in the last three months must show documentation of recovery, which includes proof of the positive test and a letter from a healthcare provider providing clearance to travel.
The test requirement will likely send some vacationers scrambling to find testing locations, and then anxiously await results, instead of spending their last days in the islands relaxing on the white-sand beaches.
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With traditional tourism hammered by the pandemic, islands across the Caribbean like Bermuda are trying to attract longer-term visitors. NICOLA MUIRHEAD/Bloomberg
As soon as London’s first coronavirus lockdown ended last summer, Abbie Sheppard, 24, took a quick vacation to the island of Bermuda.
Four months later, the vacation is long over but she’s still there – one of the thousands of people lured to islands in the Caribbean and the North Atlantic by programmes aimed at snagging remote workers. “I just never went back, ” Sheppard, the chief of staff at the celebrity-booking company Cameo, said by telephone.