Well, government has heard the very loud public and private lobbying well enough, but it remains unmoved.
Coming out of a Cabinet session this afternoon, the Attorney General told us via phone that Belize is not ready yet:
Jules Vasquez
"I know that there is great pressure in Belize from many in the tourism sector. Is there any flexibility on this? Are you all thinking of changing the July 1st timeline? I know that a cabinet meeting was held today. Is there a re-thinking of reactivating this July 1st opening on the governments' part?"
Voice of: Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General
"We think about it every day, Jules. Right now it's simply not safe to open up the airport and just let people in. If we get the Covid-19 disease here in such a way that we can't handle it, then we are thoroughly doomed. We still don't believe at this moment on this very day at this time that it is safe for the Belizean government to allow the opening of the airport and we simply cannot put the Belizean people to that exposure and so we have to be very careful that when we do open it, we are not running any unnecessary risk. Jamaica has said they will open June 15th, Antigua and Barbuda opened June 1st, yesterday. But the way they are opening they are relying on some test that are maybe at best 48%-49% accurate and reliable. That is not something that we believe is in the best interest of the Belizean people. Who knows? They may come a time when come hell or high water we have to take the risk, but for now, we just don't believe that the defenses that are available to us justify us opening the economy especially for tourism and then at the same time exposing the Belizean people to this deadly disease. We are in fact in what is known as the low season, so we still don't know if that we open the economy today to foreigners for tourism purposes - we still don't know if we will get that boom that we think that we would get if we open it up. So we just think that for what we will get even if we open it up at this point or too quickly it doesn't justify exposure we would suffer."
Last week the Prime Minister said that the Belize airport will not be able to reopen until there is mass availability of approved rapid tests - which are not presently available anywhere.
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