Cayman lifts COVID travel restrictions

The Cayman Islands government has announced it is dropping all its remaining travel-related COVID restrictions, meaning travellers will no longer be required to obtain permission from Travel Cayman to enter the islands and unvaccinated tourists will be able to come here without having to quarantine.

In what Premier Wayne Panton today described as, “we hope and we pray … our last specific COVID-19 press briefing”, he announced that under changes to the Control of Covid-19 (Travel) Regulations – which will come into effect on Wednesday, 24 Aug. – incoming passengers will no longer be required to provide their vaccination status.

The changes do not impact the Immigration Transition Act, which requires new work-permit holders entering Cayman to be vaccinated, he said. He added that the provision would remain in place for overseas workers coming to live long-term in Cayman, and he does not see that changing “unless there is a significant change internationally on the prevalence of COVID”.

Amendments are also being made to the Control and Management of Covid-19 Regulations. These include the dropping of a requirement for exit PCR tests for COVID-positive individuals in isolation. Also, close contacts of people who have tested positive for COVID can continue to work and attend school if they complete a daily LFT test and have a negative result, the premier said.

All restrictions on the sizes of public gatherings, on land or sea, indoors or outdoors, are being dropped.

The mandatory wearing of masks in hospitals, residential homes, places of detention and prisons will continue, Health Minister Sabrina Turner said. Mask-wearing in churches, restaurants, bars and other places of business remains discretionary, she added.

Turner said COVID-19 is still classified by the World Health Organization as a pandemic and, therefore, is a notifiable disease and should be reported to Public Health. She appealed to anyone who has tested positive on an LFT to undergo a free confirmatory PCR test at Public Health’s drive-through testing centre at the Truman Bodden Sports Complex.

She also noted that, under the regulation amendments, the isolation period for COVID-positive individuals will be seven days, regardless of whether a person is vaccinated or unvaccinated.

Travel Cayman to be disbanded

Officials at the press briefing thanked Travel Cayman for the exceptional work it had done since the pandemic began in March 2020.

As restrictions eased in increments, the workload on Travel Cayman staff decreased accordingly. Next week, on 24 Aug., as the last of those restrictions disappear, so too will the role of Travel Cayman, which is being disbanded.

At its busiest, the number of people working at the agency grew to more than 120. It now has 87 employees, Wesley Howell, chief officer in the Ministry of Border Control and Labour, said at the briefing.

Of the remaining staff, 30% have already been seconded to other government departments, while efforts are being made to find positions for the rest, Howell said.

He added that the “polished” customer service and technology skills of the Travel Cayman staff were transferable and would make them valuable employees within other government agencies or in the private sector.

Their current contracts expire at the end of next month, Howell said.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, the work of Travel Cayman has been wide-ranging, and has included processing applications for Travel Declarations and Travel Certificates, checking documentation of arriving passengers at the airport, securing monitoring bracelets on arrivals, making quarantine arrangements for incoming travellers, arranging food deliveries for isolating individuals, and carrying out welfare checks on people in isolation.

‘Good news for travellers’

Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan welcomed the lifting of the travel restrictions, saying it was “not just good news for travellers, it’s great news for our tourism industry, as we recover and rebuild after two-and-a-half years of COVID-related restrictions”.

He said it had become “increasingly clear that our stance on taking only vaccinated travellers was out of step with other countries around the world”, which had lifted their restrictions some time ago. These included warm-weather destinations in the region, which were competing with Cayman for “the same tourist dollars”.

Cayman’s removal of the travel restrictions “levelled the playing field”, he said, and also improved the travel experience of tourists by improving processing times at airports, as paperwork relating to vaccinations and Travel Declarations and Travel Certificates from Travel Cayman would no longer need to be checked.

Vaccinations ‘our insurance policy’

Interim Chief Medical Officer Dr. Autilia Newton said the falling prevalence of COVID internationally, Cayman’s high vaccination rate, and low numbers of hospitalisations and deaths had led the government and health officials to determine it was now safe to remove the remaining travel restrictions.

Almost 93% of Cayman’s population have had two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 36.9% have had a third, or booster, dose, according to the latest statistics. Just 3.6% have had a fourth dose.

Newton urged anyone who has not been vaccinated to get inoculated. She also advised those aged over 50 or who are considered high-risk to get a fourth dose if they have already had the first booster.

Acknowledging that COVID is “still around us and will remain around us”, she said medical professionals were “approaching it now as part of all the respiratory viruses”.