And, keeping it on tourism, we've told you about the letter form the Belize tourism Industry Association to the Prime Minister. They are asking him to simplify the arrival process at the PGIA for visitors.
They ask:
-With the state of Belize's daily new infection rate is there more of a danger from international tourists infecting Belizeans or Belizeans infecting tourists?
-If Belizeans are at least as likely as tourists to be infected with COVID-19, why are we testing every visitor but leaving the vast majority of Belizeans untested?
- By insisting on a complex set of protocols to even get into the country, might we be needlessly discouraging most tourists from even trying to visit Belize?
- Why is it that Belizean hotel guests staying at the Gold Standard hotels as foreign tourists are allowed to come and go as they please, travel countrywide unsupervised and socialize with anyone of their choosing while the visitors are confined to their hotels?
Today, Dr Marvin Manzanero said the NOC did review those requests:
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, DHS
"Yes, I got a copy of that letter and it was taken to NOC yesterday. I managed to send a couple of those to Mr. Burgos, I saw the 4 asks that they had from my vantage point. I don't know that one or two are entirely true because making it seem as the protocol has been unchanged and that is not the case, it has been changing as we go along. I don't know that you can make it a free for all yet because it's still going to be a learning process once the airport opens. If middle of October you have a rapid test that has a highly sensitive, highly specific nature and it give you a turnaround time of 5 minutes, fine you go and work with it and that becomes your new protocol. Ideally you want to make it a smooth process for everybody, but I don't know that you can do it so quickly without having some level of built in measures to try to keep this under control. I think it's a learning process."
