Tourism amidst pandemic

The directive from the country’s health authorities that fully-vaccinated tourists may roam freely around the country once they complete quarantine protocols only underscores the ruling administration’s abysmal efforts to contain the spread of a deadly virus that has already claimed 10,000 Sri Lankan lives.

In a situation that would be unthinkable in any other country, tourists will be exempt from lockdown regulations and quarantine curfews, free to roam through local communities, carrying the contagion from district to district as they crisscross the island on sightseeing tours.

The cash-strapped regime made its intentions to give the economy priority over saving the lives of citizens clear when it reopened the borders to international visitors in January 2021, in an effort to rejuvenate the battered tourism sector. In hindsight the decision was a terrible one. 

The reopening was premature, with vaccine rollouts only just beginning in the US, UK and Europe. Ukrainian and Russian ‘bio-bubble’ visitors ran amok, violated COVID-protocols put in place to protect the local population and exposed hundreds of local tourism sector workers to the virus. Furthermore, the act of reopening the borders in an island nation that had contained the first two COVID-19 waves with some success, was tantamount to criminal negligence, as the virus mutated globally into ever more deadly variants. 

By keeping the airport open, the Government effectively imported COVID-19 variants into the country from January-May. The price for this short-sighted and callous economic calculation was paid in 8,500 lives lost to COVID-19 from June-August 2021. Ten thousand Sri Lankans are dead, and nearly 200 are dying daily, and the Government refuses to give effect to the lockdown it declared three weeks ago and will not even begin a discussion regarding the closure of the country’s international airport.

The fact that the directive regarding foreign visitors and their exemptions from COVID-19 protocols being put in place countrywide comes from the health authorities tells a sorry tale about the degree to which epidemiological expertise is informing these decisions.  Globally, centres for disease control and top virologists and immunologists are studying the phenomenon of ‘breakthrough infections’ or COVID-19 infections recorded in persons who have been fully vaccinated. Fully-vaccinated people might not only develop symptoms of COVID-19, but worse still, could become asymptomatic carriers of the virus. Some of the highest profile COVID-19 deaths in Sri Lanka have been of fully-vaccinated individuals. 

Fully-vaccinated tourists who test negative for the virus continue to be at risk of contracting the virus – and becoming a burden on the country’s healthcare system, or spreading it within the community. Cafés, restaurants and bars that are no longer open to locals during this extended lockdown period will remain open to tourists. But the directive ignores the fact that these establishments will be manned by Sri Lankan citizens, who will have to serve foreign customers.

Health Services Director General Dr. Asela Gunawardena, whose primary objective should be the health of the community he serves, explained in his circular announcing the decision for the lockdown apartheid, that the decision was an economic calculation, aimed at keeping the tourism sector operational during the lockdown. After all, the Government is scandalised by the fact that the revenue losses for the Excise Department from the closure of bars and liquor shops have run into the billions. The 10,000 lives lost because of this epic mismanagement of a deadly public health emergency appears to matter much less.

A moment of silence for the Government that puts the economy and tourism revenue over the health, safety and lives of its citizens.