“What activities are open next week?Do you have any recommendations on things that are still open?”ask a Facebook user.
“Stay home!” the user responds.
The Facebook organization titled “What’s Going On St.Thomas?” flooded with sharp and exasperated comments urging travelers to stay away.It’s a marked change. Before the coronavirus pandemic, exchanges between travelers and islanders resonated with promises of emotion and pleasure.Now, tour operators to the mainland who manage the Facebook page are temporarily looking to suppress any expression of anger.
In the nearby city of Puerto Rico, friction has spread in genuine life.Media reports detailed several episodes in which tourists, having escaped pandemic restrictions in their country, violent and destroyed products at outlets after being asked to wear masks.
The COVID-19 pandemic faced economic interests opposed to the rules of public aptitude in the United States. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are feeling this tension strongly, as any of the US territories are counting on tourism to generate profits and create jobs. I wonder whether to welcome visitors to those islands.
Island and Beyond: Where can Americans vacation around the world right now?
Tourism accounts for more than one part of the virgin Islands’ gross domestic product.In Puerto Rico, the industry accounts for 80,000 jobs and approximately 6.5% of the island’s overall economy.
But islanders are only vulnerable to COVID-19’s economic shocks.Residents of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are diagnosed with chronic fitness situations such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease at higher rates than in the maximum states of the United States, putting them at high risk of disease headaches.Virus.
In short, the very industry that provides an economic livelihood to the islanders endangers their health.
When COVID-19 triggered alarms in the overdue winter, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands followed strong COVID prevention methods before the US peak states.But it’s not the first time
In Puerto Rico, Governor Wanda Vazquez issued a decree on March 15, well finalizing the island by applying a curfew, an order to remain in the closure of homes and businesses. The first cases of coronavirus on the island were reported on March 13.
Similarly, Virgin Islands Governor Albert Bryan Jr. issued decrees prohibiting hotels, villas and other hotels from accepting travelers between March 25 and June 1 and residents.According to a March 20 update from the Ministry of Health, the territory had six instances shown COVID-19 and 43 pending effects on the territory at the time.
However, neither territory was able to close their airports.Local officials do not have the authority to do so because the federal government regulates aviation.
“Part of the challenge of being an American colony, in particular, is that, you know, we don’t have borders,” said Hadiya Sewer, president and co-founder of St. JanCo: St John Heritage CollectiveArray, an organization for the preservation of cultural heritage and territorial rights on the small island of San Juan in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
However, competitive, while effective measures have been worthwhile for citizens like Melina Aguilar.
Prior to the confinement, the 31-year-old entrepreneur worked as an excursion consultant for Isla Caribe, a company she founded and offers historical walking tours of Ponce, Puerto Rico.The home order in March ended Aguilar’s business for 3 months and kidnapped her.at home.
Aguilar said the sacrifice would have been worth it if the island had been able to withstand the spread until the end of the border and applying a 14-day quarantine for travellers, but it doesn’t look that way.According to Johns Hopkins University’s knowledge analyzed through USA TODAY, the average seven-day instances on May 1, while Puerto Rico was still blocked, was a little more than 40 instances consistent with the day.had doubled to more than a hundred instances and had doubled to more than 230 instances according to the day two weeks later.
“We may have just had the culmination of being locked up for three months,” Aguilar said, “but now we’re stuck.”
In the summer, both territories were eager to resume operations.With many overseas vacation destinations banning Americans, it seemed that the nearby continent would be full of beach lovers, who, after living under orders to stay at home for months, would be willing to – no passport required – in the sun and sand.
The U.S. Virgin Islands has been in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Hus They officially welcomed tourists to their shores on June 1, with warnings. Travelers to the capvirus hot spots had to submit data about COVID-19, consult an online portal to obtain a “certification code” of negative result.quarantine for 14 days or until they have documentation of a negative control result.
But locals and tourists said coVID-19 implementation measures were not consistent.Captain Matthias Bitterwolf, owner of Antillean Yacht Charters in St.Thomas said he had delivered a boat to Puerto Rico and was not allowed to leave the shipment until local police can only find out his COVID-19 documents.His coVID-19 prestige was not verified when he returned to Santo Tomás.
The number of cases in the Virgin Islands began to increase rapidly, and the total number of cases more than doubled between June 1 and July 15.
Governor Bryan responded by issuing other executive orders to reclaim the epidemic, adding a ban on beach visits after four ps and banning shoppers from status or eating at bars in restaurants.the islands recorded their highest number of instances and deaths in August, according to Johns Hopkins.
Puerto Rico officially welcomed tourists on July 15, while still applying some RESTRICTIONs related to COVID.As in the Virgin Islands, the government required travelers to submit documentation of a negative COVID-19 check upon arrival.
Dr. Victor Ramos, president of the island’s medical arrangement that is concerned with organizing the island’s medical careers, said those decisions tended to reveal the “gap” between the medical career organization that promotes closure and the economic working group that leaves everything open.»
In July, the local economy is in ruins. The Ministry of Labour reported that more than 21% of the island’s workforce received pandemic-related unemployment assistance in the week ended August 1.
But the increase in the number of cases has led local officials to inspire that only one essential product is allowed. As of Monday, the island had recorded more than 32,800 cases of COVID-19 and at least 434 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins’ knowledge.
Government data, however, imply that the number of construction cases in Puerto Rico is not caused by tourists, they are not the culprits, insisted Leah Chandler, marketing director of Discover Puerto Rico, the island’s official tourism website.the spread is similar to the return of the island’s population after visiting COVID-19 hot spots such as Texas and Florida.
Despite the pandemic and restrictions, there was no shortage of tourists in any of the territories.”We would have hoped this would be a slow time for us in terms of tourism,” Sewer said.”He’s too busy.”
However, the trend lines for the number of COVID-19 instances did not move in the right direction for any of the territories, so it is not unexpected that Puerto Rico closed a few days after the reopening and that the U.S. Virgin Islands followed suit on August 19.
Underlying socioeconomic and physical disorders put citizens at high risk.It is only the prevalence of chronic fitness disorders such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.The largest number of multigenerational families in both spaces complicates a family’s ability to distance themselves socially.of its most vulnerable members. About a quarter of the population of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands is 65 years of age or older and poverty is widespread.
At the same time, both territories have limited health care infrastructure, which makes it difficult to believe that they can take care of their own population in an emergency, not to mention visitors who may have poor physical condition and move to an island if the virus were to increase.
Currently, the U.S. Virgin Islands have two major hospitals, one in St. Thomas and one in St. Louis.Croix, and a fitness clinic in San Juan.The territory has 20 beds of extensive attention and about one hundred single-use enthusiasts for its 106,235 residents.said JUSTa Encarnacion, U.S. Virgin Islands Health Commissioner.Each island has about 30 enthusiasts at full capacity.
In Puerto Rico, about 60% of the island’s enthusiastic adults were to be cared for on Monday, however, extensive care beds are harder to find, Ramos said, who are filled with COVID-19 patients and those whose condition worsened after avoiding care.worry about contracting the virus, he said.
The series of disorders that have besse these islands amplifies the effects of the pandemic, including debt crises and infrastructure damage caused by hurricanes and earthquakes; Islanders are also concerned about the option of fighting a hurricane and a coronavirus outbreak, a truth they already faced when COVID-19 hindered the ability of the U.S. Virgin Islands emergency control agency to distribute sandbags before a typhoon last July.
Hurricane researchers at Colorado State University expect an “extremely active” Atlantic 2020 hurricane season.
“At this point, we literally have mistakes overlaid on mistakes,” said Sewer of the St. John’s Collective.
However, Joseph Boschulte, tourism commissioner of the Virgin Islands, is cautiously optimistic about the location between economic interests and fitness.
“We appreciate the considerations of our tourism partners and stakeholders,” he said. But with the increase in cases, he said, “we want to reestablish, take stock, safeguard human life and prepare to restart our tourism economy at a later date.”
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a non-profit fitness data service.It is an independent publishing program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.