The Kingdom Foreign Ministry raising its travel advisory for St. Maarten from yellow to orange is yet another blow to the local hospitality industry already hard-hit by the ongoing coronavirus-related crisis. The decision taken in The Hague was based on the current number of active COVID-19 cases on the Dutch side.
It means that people in the Netherlands still planning to come to the island may reconsider. The same reason was given by French-side authorities to control the border, along with opening Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) to US flights effective August 1.
The latter seems to have gone relatively well, although 70 of 350 passengers from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte and New York on the first day needed to be (re)tested mostly because they had taken the antibody test instead of the mandatory PCR version. Each reportedly paid US $125 for the test on arrival, but the good news is that all were said to be negative.
As stated before, there was really no choice but to start readmitting Americans, because they are the main engine that drives the tourism economy. The same thing goes for Aruba, which let them back in three weeks ago and has recorded relatively few positive cases from testing on arrival that were all quarantined.
Of course, one or more can always slip by, but the big difference is that St. Maarten, after a period of zero known infections, again has community transmission with two known clusters. The numbers are even going up to levels during the earlier outbreak mostly because of contract-tracing, but – thankfully – so far not in terms of persons with serious symptoms requiring hospitalisation.
And that is important, because lack of healthcare capacity to deal with extremely sick patients is one of the biggest concerns also regarding the welcoming back of visitors. Great care must be taken not to overwhelm medical facilities, but there is no indication of that for the moment.
It remains imperative that both residents and guests alike strictly follow the guidelines of social distancing, hand sanitising and wearing a face-mask when entering any establishment. If the situation gets much worse the entire recovery now initiated could backfire, with all possible socioeconomic and financial consequences.
There is another aspect to the Dutch travel advisory: urging passengers coming from St. Maarten to self-quarantine 14 days. However, an arrangement has apparently been made to pre-test the students flying to Schiphol Airport on Tuesday to further their education in the Netherlands, so that this does not apply to them and there is thus no need for concern among the parents.
