COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) – Sri Lanka reopened to foreign tourists on Thursday after a nearly 10-month pandemic shutdown that cut deep into the Indian Ocean island’s lucrative travel industry.
Full operations also resumed Thursday at the island’s two international airports, where commercial flights could be accommodated.
According to new protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19, tourists should be tested for the virus 72 hours prior to their flight, upon arrival at their hotel in Sri Lanka and again seven days later in their country. They have to stay in a “travel bubble” designated in 14 tourist zones without mixing with the locals. There are about 180 hotels reserved for tourist accommodations.
The resumption of tourism follows a pilot project that began on December 26, in which 1,500 tourists from Ukraine visited Sri Lanka in one such travel bubble.
The government closed the country to tourists last March when an outbreak of the virus surfaced. The international airports were closed except for limited flights allowing Sri Lankans to return home.
Tourism is a vital economic sector for Sri Lanka, accounting for about 5% of the gross domestic product and employs 250,000 people directly and up to 3 million indirectly. Hotels, other businesses and their employees faced crippling income losses.
Sri Lanka had fewer than 4,000 cases of coronavirus infection until October, when clusters centered on a clothing factory and fish market spread across the capital Colombo and the suburbs. As of Thursday, it has confirmed more than 55,000 cases with 274 fatalities.
In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:
– People traveling to Australia from most other countries from Friday will have to test negative for the corona virus before departure. Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Thursday that he had signed orders requiring international travelers to undergo a negative test within three days of departure to Australia. All international passengers will also have to wear masks on their flights. “The success at home, the agonizing challenges abroad, the fact that we have new, more virulent strains emerging all over the world – these remind us exactly why we have been able to keep Australians safe,” Hunt told reporters in Melbourne. . New Zealand and some Pacific islands are exempt from the new rules.
– China is making some of the toughest travel restrictions to date as coronavirus cases increase in several northern provinces ahead of the lunar New Year’s travel rush. Next month’s festival is the main time of the year for family gatherings and is often the only time many migrant workers can return to their rural homes. However, anyone wishing to do so this year will have to undergo a negative virus test in the preceding week, and severe restrictions can sometimes be imposed in some communities, including quarantines. The National Health Commission reported a further 126 cases of local transmission in the past 24 hours on Thursday, the highest number, 68, in northern Heilongjiang province, part of the vast region formerly known as Manchuria. The Commission spokesman, Mi Feng, also said the international experts visiting Wuhan held video conferences with Chinese experts as part of their work. The World Health Organizations are quarantined at the start of their journey to investigate the origin of the virus. Chinese officials have tightly controlled such research, while promoting fringe theories that the virus may have originated abroad.