THE Atlantis resort on Paradise Island has delayed its opening to July 30, Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis announced in the House of Assembly on Tuesday. He said he spoke with officials at the resort earlier Tuesday, who informed him that as a result of what’s happening in the US “they have decided that it will be best that they delay their opening until the 30th of July.”
COVID-19 cases are spiking in many states in America.
This comes as the country plans to resume commercial international travel on Wednesday. Atlantis was initially planning to reopen its doors on July 7.
Dr Minnis also told the House of Assembly that Cabinet has approved the establishment of a COVID-19 enforcement unit to enforce the country’s laws to mitigate the spread of the disease. He said the unit will ensure everyone complies with the law, whether they are visitors, residents or citizens.
“If they are in violation, they will be dealt with,” Dr Minnis said.
• See Wednesday’s Tribune for more on this story.
Comments
tribanon 3 years, 10 months ago
The management team at Atlantis should be running our country......they clearly have much more sense than Minnis and his cabinet team. Our country should have been left closed to international travel until at least August 1. That decision should have been a 'no brainer' with Florida currently ablaze with Covid-19 cases which are putting great strain on available ICU medical resources in South Florida.
T2 3 years, 9 months ago
saying the ICU availability is under great strain is outright dishonest. My dear friend works at UM Jackson Memorial pneumology dept.... plenty of ICU beds there...
tribanon 3 years, 9 months ago
So why has JM like so many other South Florida hospitals had to commandeer others areas of their hospital to make room for the increasing numbers of Covid-19 patients? I guess you missed this past Sunday's New York Times article by Frances Robles in which it was reported that more than a quarter of all patients now being admiteed to JM have tested positive for Covid-19.
mrsmith 3 years, 10 months ago
As I said in another post today, where all these tourists gonna stay with major hotels shut for at least another month?
newcitizen 3 years, 9 months ago
What tourists? The reason they are staying shut is because no one is coming.
tribanon 3 years, 9 months ago
Precisely. But we can be rest assured that quite a few of the few dare devil visitors coming from the US will be asymptomatic super spreaders of Covid-19.
proudloudandfnm 3 years, 10 months ago
So where are all these tourists coming tomorrow going to be staying????
I hope to hear our PM tonight saying we will not open tomorrow. This is insane...
thps 3 years, 9 months ago
Airbnb where they will get temperature checks daily from this heat outside.
SP 3 years, 9 months ago
The Bahamas is blindly rushing into open borders with the highly contaminated U.S. using the need for tourist dollars as our reasoning when the EU is doing the exact opposite based on epidemiological criteria!
https://news.yahoo.com/americans-not-...">https://news.yahoo.com/americans-not-...
If the situation were reversed with the U.S. having COVID under control and the Bahamas being the one with the problem, without question uncle Donald Trump wouldn't allow Bahamians to even enter the U.S. embassy on Queen Street, let alone entering the united states!
The Bahamas should bite the bullet and follow epidemiologically defined guidelines and not allow Americans to enter the country until it is safe to do so.
In the meantime, the government should make our destination more attractive by leading the way by lowering tourism-related taxes and encourage airlines and hotels to take a hit by lowering rates for travelers from approved countries. Local tour companies should also be asked to lower rates to attract more visitors to spend locally.
We need to think out of the box and aim for "volume heads in beds"!
Alternatively, if we allow the Americans in at this time our country WILL become overwhelmed with tourists transmitted COVID-19. We will be forced to shut, & lockdown again, and lose all tourists from everywhere.
It makes more sense to have fewer tourists on sustainable bases than many tourists for a short time, only to lose any gains with inevitable shutdowns.
Honestman 3 years, 9 months ago
SP - your post is much too sensible and will go right over the heads of this administration. Opening up to US tourists at this time is beyond madness.
TalRussell 3 years, 9 months ago
Bigger is no longer appealing to tourists!
Atlantis, Baha Mar nor The Grand Lucayan will be opening as financially self-sustainable resorts on any day, week, or month during the tourism years of 2020/2021/2022.
Nod Once for Yeah, Twice for No to The Colony's PopoulacesPurse, can kiss its millions of out pocket dollars dumped into the Grand Lucayan Hotel a forever goodbye?
lorwarn 3 years, 9 months ago
There are many areas of the US that are completely safe, and most Americans are very serious about their own health and safety, and that of the Bahamians. The US news is amplifying and sensationalizing the bad - per usual. The limited amount of flights, and seats on those flights, along with the majority of Americans not at all eager to travel, will result in those "fewer tourists". This is what your government knows, and this is the soft reopening they are eager to start, so that the economy has hope of any recovery happening in 2020.
ThisIsOurs 3 years, 9 months ago
When a tropical storm watch is announced, if you have a proper disaster preparedness committee they may initially meet every other day to assess what the business needs to do. Is this likely to develop into a hurricane? Is the hurricane likely to hit us? Will it have a direct hit? How strong will it be?What kind of damage could we sustain? Is our communication equipment ready? Is the building prepared? Is the generator fueled? Those are just some of the questions.
The next day/2 days/3 days you meet again and ask the same questions again. You're responding to the same concerns as the environment changes and you're being proactive about it. And of course you would have prepared and tested all of these protocols months in advance of hurricane season.
As the hurricane watch turns into a warning, the frequency of your meetings change, depending on the threat it's every day, morning and afternoon or every hour 2 hours..whatever makes sense.
It appears to me that the hotels are doing this. They had a disaster plan and like any properly organized business, they are reviewing it as the environment around them changes. I expect on July 28th they will have another of a series of meetings and make a determination on whether they can open July30 and the date may change again..
Yesterday they had a go-live meeting and assessed the July 1 opening and decided it wasn't worth it. They probably have multiple criteria that they're checking. Number of guests, readiness of protocols, risk of infected guests, where guests are coming from, protocols at the airport and possibly others. At the end of their assessment they decided they could not meet their safety/risk assessment threshold for opening.
Kudos to them for being proactive.
My fear is the govt is doing none of this. They simply have no idea of the many levels of planning. Or, they're not listening to thise that do, so desperate to say they're open and not responding to the changing environment. This is why I don't accept the we've never done this before argument. None of us have ever done July-1-2020 before, but we assess it as it comes. Is it raining? Is it hot, excessively? Is my tyre flat? Is my child sick? And our plan adjusts if we meet an environment that's different from the norm
This govt doesn't appear to have that filter. Their phased reopening infographic was a joke. It was so superficial.They never indicated any nuances in their planning, no criteria to move between stages just a fake timeline of July1 because the hotels and cruise lines said so. Now it's July1 and no hotels or cruise lines are open and the govt has rushed us to an unsafe very risky situation for no reason.
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