And the last time we spoke to the PM about the border reopening, we told him that Melchor was looking to make a deal with Belize that they would drop their one-day testing requirement if Belize did the same. The PM had said they would have looked into it and today the minister explained that he has been discussing the matter with the ambassador.
But while Belizeans may be able to go to Guatemala for a day without requiring a test, there might soon be a time when they could spend overnight and not have to test when coming back into the country. The same goes for the northern border - but, of course, that would depend on a decrease in COVID numbers. Minister Bernard told us more.
Hon. Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"We already made that arrangement in terms of persons travelling for tourism for example, there are tourists who have to test, on Guatemala side, you have to take a negative test so you have to test and I spoke to the ambassador last week and I understand that was a decision from the municipality itself and not necessarily a federal decision but we are in discussion, we are again looking at the whole issue of the overnight stay and like I said the recommendation is when our numbers start to reduce, we already made it available for those tourists who test here in Belize to go over to Tikal or whatever and coming back, does not require them to take that test because they already paid for a test on the same day so we already and that arrange so we are also looking at the fact if our numbers continue to be the way it is today and our positivity rate continues to reduce the way we want it to go then the recommendation would be that we remove the 24 hour overnight requirement to after three nights to give people mor time so that is something we are discussing, we haven't taken that to cabinet as yet but it is something that we will put in the paper that we are proposing to take to Cabinet with the easing of some of these restrictions."
