By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMIAN medical experts yesterday insisted measures are in place to limit the risk of someone with COVID-19 entering The Bahamas.

Visitors are required to present a negative test, while high risk travellers are being denied a health visa to visit the country.

Questions were also raised about a group of Mexican construction workers who arrived in the country, but it was confirmed they had negative tests.

The policy to enter the country is that people produce a COVID-19 negative test result from an accredited lab taken within 10 days of travel. That timeframe will be reduced to seven days starting July 7.

Health officials were also asked during the press conference why people from the United States, the current epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic, are being allowed into the country. They said they used a risk stratification process to determine who can enter the country. Dr Dahl-Regis said kinks are being worked out in the system after international commercial travel resumed on Wednesday. Certain travellers will be rated higher than others and high risk travellers will not receive a health visa, they said.

Tourism Director General Joy Jibrilu said: “The application is made online by the traveller intending to fly to The Bahamas, whether Bahamian, resident or visitor. That is required by everyone. The uploading of the COVID-19 test, your results, is a part of that process.

“A specific unit has been established within the Ministry of Tourism that we have called the travel compliance unit so in addition to the platform recognising a COVID-19 negative test we have a unit of persons who are doing an extra layer of checking, of security and they are going through every single uploading of COVID-19 test to ensure that a rating a traveller may have received, whether green, weather amber, purple is really for Bahamians and those exempted in any particular category, they can go through that in real time and if there’s something that needs to be flagged, that then is sent up to the Ministry of Health.”

Dr Dahl-Regis revealed that the government of Turks and Caicos islands has donated 10,000 PCR test kits to this country. She said there is an equal number of swabs in the country.

“We have certainly more swabs that we had initially and during the midway,” she said.

“What we also did was anticipate that there may be global shortages. We attempted to front-load the supplies given that the shelf life of these agents and reagents do not expire.”

Asked about the country’s testing rate, Dr Dahl-Regis said there is no current need for widespread testing.

“We do not at this time anticipate widespread testing. We have no community spread of COVID-19,” she said.

Bahamasair chairman Tommy Turnquest said that all Mexicans who arrived in the country yesterday to do construction work at the Baker’s Bay resort in Abaco had negative COVID-19 tests from an accredited lab.

Their tests, he said, were taken within the required ten-day period. He spoke to The Tribune after top health officials expressed uncertainty about the test status of the workers during a Ministry of Health press conference.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Pearl McMillan was unsure whether people from Mexico had even entered the country while Dr Merceline Dahl-Regis, the coordinator of the government’s COVID-19 response, said officials are now investigating if all the Mexicans met qualifications for entry.

“Indeed, we had a landing of nationals from South America that came in,” Dr Dahl-Regis said. “We are investigating this as we speak but I want to give you the assurance that (Ministry of) Health will require that each individual who landed present with a negative PCR test and if it doesn’t meet the qualifications we will do it, we will do the test to be sure that we have no transmission and if there is a positive test we will deal with it. We are told that they have had (a test) and we await receipt of those tests and once we receive them we will determine that they were good, valid, positive or negative.”

When contacted after the press conference, Mr Turnquest said 135 Mexican nationals were scheduled arrive in the country on a chartered Bahamasair plane.

“They had the required documentation,” he said. “The plane arrived at 5am this morning on our 737-700 plane which is the only plane we have that can do a four and a half flight and we had two ATR planes transport them to Abaco after they arrived in the country. We were pleased with the commercial transaction.”

Images of the workers at Lynden Pindling International Airport angered some who believe Bahamians should get the jobs given the high unemployment rate.