By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Vaccination cards will have to be in an easily verifiable format before fully inoculated Bahamians can travel without a negative COVID-19 PCT test, a Cabinet minister said yesterday.

Dionsio D’Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation, indicated to reporters before the full weekly Cabinet meeting that testing requirements for fully-vaccinated Bahamians travelling inter-island may be removed. This, he suggested, would only happen once the “yellow card” that shows an individual’s name and number of jabs is presented in a secure format that can be easily vetted.

He said: “You’re going have to get it in a format where we can review the whole thing, as opposed to just the first page. We need to see when each dose was administered, and obviously the type of vaccine that was administered, so that we can approve it as as being something that we accept.

Mr D’Aguilar reiterated that he is “concerned” with the level of hesitancy many Bahamians have shown when it comes to taking the COVID-19 vaccine, again arguing that “the benefits outweigh the risks”.

Turning to the entry processes for fully vaccinated visitors, 90 percent of whom from the US, Mr D’Aguilar said The Bahamas’ acceptance of the Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccines, and the need for travellers to present the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccination card, had made those procedure “straightforward”.

He added: “We have seen an absolute explosion in the number of people that are applying. As you can imagine, when we had the PCR test, people could only apply within five days of travel. Now, when you have a vaccine, you can apply months in advance.

“So that’s somewhat overloaded the [health travel visa] website at the outset. So we’ve had to bring it back down to you can only apply within 14 days of travel. Otherwise, the website gets overloaded.”

The Bahamas travel health visa website is now being adjusted to take on the doubling of applications, which Mr D’Aguilar said have increased from 2,000 per day to now 5,000 per day with persons booking for travel as far out as October.

He added: “We’re up to over 5,000 applications a day and it’s very encouraging, but we need to be able to synthesise and go through all of those applications on an efficient basis. Everybody has grown to expect us to respond within 24 hours. That has slipped with the greater demand, and so we’re having to adjust manpower and approval processes to accommodate this surge in demand for visas.”