There would be “almost zero” additional risk to Cayman in allowing children to come to the island, a doctor and tourism business owner has claimed.
Michael Tibbetts, owner of Clearly Cayman dive resorts and the vice president of the Cayman Islands Tourism Association, said some of the island’s policies were now out of touch with the “reality on the ground”.
He said many of the policies were more suitable to the “zero COVID” scenario of a few months ago, rather than the current situation, which puts Cayman’s rate of community transmission among the highest in the world.
In those circumstances, he said there was no additional risk in allowing children to visit the island, along with their vaccinated parents.
“Being super cautious is one thing when we have a COVID-zero scenario, but we now have significant community transmission and we have not adapted to that new reality,” he stated.
He said allowing vaccinated visitors to bring their unvaccinated children – with a pre-arrival PCR test for the entire family – was less risky than some of the current policies, for example allowing children to stay in class when a family member has tested positive if they can produce a negative lateral flow test.
Based on current transmission statistics, he said a child in Florida was 44 times less likely to have COVID than a child in Cayman. He said almost every other country, with the exception of those that have a zero-COVID policy, was allowing children of vaccinated adults to enter.
“A couple of visitors with COVID would have no effect on the community transmission when you have hundreds of cases every day,” he added.
“The reality is that we are more of a threat to visitors than they are to us at this point. That is a huge paradigm shift compared to where we were a few months ago and I am not sure that the policy reflects that as yet.”
He said there was no need for government to wait to proceed to phase 5 of the reopening plan and suggested Cayman would not begin to truly recover its tourism market share until that happens.
“It is almost impossible to market Cayman’s reopening and tell people, ‘we are open but you can’t bring your family’.
“There is almost zero additional risk in allowing families [to enter the Cayman Islands] but there is a huge negative consequence for tourism in the long term in keeping them out.”
Christmas family reunions cancelled
Georgie Loxton, owner of Liberty Wealth Partners and a mother-of-three, said families, particularly those with relatives overseas, had struggled with the impacts of the border closure. She said she was not personally worried about the threat of the virus to her children, who are all under 12.
“I am worried about them not seeing their grandparents for another year, I am worried about them not seeing their cousins, I worried about the moments that are getting missed. Perhaps it seems like a small thing to some people, but this is what life is about.”
She said the decision not to allow unvaccinated children to travel prevented the chance of a long-awaited Christmas reunion for many families, including Caymanian families, with relatives overseas that they had not seen for years.
“People have missed birthdays, they have missed weddings, they have missed being by the side of loved ones as they died and they still don’t know when they will be able to have those moments again.
“It is more than a mental health impact. Being able to spend time with your family is a basic human need.”
While it has been possible to travel with a 14-day quarantine period, that has not proved practical for many families with working parents and children in school.
While opening up for tourists is important to the economy, she believes the toll on family life has been underestimated.
“We thought that this could be the reunion Christmas, but that won’t be possible for many. There are so many people that haven’t seen children, grandchildren, siblings or cousins for three years in some cases.”
While the restrictions were in place to protect public health, Loxton said it was understandable. But with 200 community COVID cases a day, she said it was hard for many to see the logic behind the restrictions at this stage.
Related Videos
Great points!
We are clearly at the point where the government’s requirements have done more harm and caused more deaths than the actual virus. While dangerous we can’t allow this to control our actions and lives. Children growing up in fear will have a far greater mental health impact than any impact from the virus.
Great article James Whittaker! Pragmatic and hits the critical issues.
A frustrated Grandparent
Thank-you! My daughter and her husband who are young working parents overseas and vaccinated have a 10 month old who has never met his aunt and uncles and thought they could stay with the Grandparents after missing 3 Christmas’s! Finally someone said it! Now it is too late to get flights. We will probably try for a reunion elsewhere in the summer…sad.
It’s a double whammy because many people living here but with family overseas are leaving over Christmas to spend time with their families overseas.
To see families that had previously booked tickets to come to Cayman and see those Cayman residents.
My 2 grand babies and their fully vaccinated parents have until December 5th to cancel the vacation villas they have rented for 2 weeks over the holidays. These 2 toddlers have not socialized with anyone other then their parents and are at NO risk to harm anyone!
We are desperately hoping that Phase 4 can be modified to allow them to come to Cayman for Christmas as was the Cruise Ship change. They are the safest guests to welcome!!!
Please change the rules now before it is too late to finalize plans! The Villa owners desperately need this rule changed too!!!
The reason that “12” was globally selected as the age (where children under 12 are allowed to travel without further vaccination or testing if parents are vaccinated), is because children under 12 are not like teenagers that go out at night, they stay home with their parents or family unit and are unlikely to come in contact with third parties with the virus as a result
Please just go elsewhere and let Cayman continue to do the right thing = protect its people!!
Yes! They have been doing a wonderful job so far. Highest COVID case count per 1000 people in the world. Something to be proud of.
👎👎👎
Good points, but do we really want to experiment with the advent of Omicron?
It is simply arbitrary and cruel for the CIG to exclude the kids. Do better. Open up.
All valid and worthwhile comments. Too bad the government couldn’t have thought through its earlier decisions.
Just to add more salt to the wound, read the accompanying article about the back-up delays in getting travel approval through Travel Cayman.
These problems, added to the fact that there are NO major airlines scheduled to fly from the US to Cayman until the middle of February, are the result of the knee-jerk reaction of Premier Panton and his cabinet of canceling the originally scheduled re-opening in early November until “the end of the year” once school kids started testing positive for Covid. As the saying goes, “those chickens are coming home to roost.”
One thing Caymanians CAN do is to remember all of this when elections come around next time.
As usual the government has NO clue what to do. The island is dying and they do not seem to care. Maybe there should be early elections
Our fully-vaccinated daughter, son in law and our two small grandchildren are still booked to come out from London on 28th December for their first holiday in two years. It is not too late (just) for the Government to recognise the pointlessness of the current rules which will prevent them coming as we all so hope. As I have said before, the change could be made by a stroke of the administrative pen, even if it is initially restricted to those related to Caymanians and residents to restrict numbers.
It’s Christmas Day today, almost 4 weeks after this article appeared.
The government did not change course and the result can be seen by strolling down 7 mile beach.
An almost complete lack of tourists.
No financial hardship for me.
However:
My daughter and family flew from England to Florida. My son and his family flew from England to Portugal.
All are having a great time.
But they all WOULD have been coming here and spending money here.
But they couldn’t because their children are too young to be vaccinated.
Imagine that lost income to these islands multiplied thousands of times over.
Has this improved the safety of local residents? This would definitely have been the case 6 months ago. With the current high level of local transmission..
hardly at all.