COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) – Sri Lanka reopened to foreign tourists on Thursday, after a close of almost 10 months of a pandemic that profoundly affected the lucrative travel industry in the island nation of the Indian Ocean.
Full operations were also resumed Thursday at the island’s two international airports, accommodating commercial flights.
According to the new protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19, tourists must be tested for the virus in their country 72 hours before the flight, when they arrive at the hotel in Sri Lanka and again seven days later. They must remain in a designated “travel bubble” in 14 tourist areas without mixing with the local population. About 180 hotels have been reserved for tourist accommodation.
The resumption of tourism follows a pilot project that started on December 26, in which 1,500 tourists from Ukraine visited Sri Lanka amid a travel bubble.
The government closed the country to tourists last March, when an outbreak of the virus emerged. International airports were closed, except for limited flights that allowed Sinhalese to return home.
Tourism is a vital economic sector for Sri Lanka, accounting for about 5% of its gross domestic product and employing 250,000 people directly and up to 3 million indirectly. Hotels, other companies and their employees have faced devastating revenue losses.
Sri Lanka had fewer than 4,000 cases of coronavirus infection until October, when clusters were concentrated in a clothing factory and a fish market in the capital, Colombo, and its suburbs. As of Thursday, it has confirmed more than 55,000 cases with 274 deaths.
In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:
– People traveling to Australia from most other countries starting on Friday will need a negative test for coronavirus before leaving. Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Thursday that he had signed orders that require international travelers to have a negative test three days after leaving for Australia. All international passengers will also need to wear masks on their flights. “Success at home, agonizing challenges abroad, the fact that we have more virulent new strains that are emerging around the world – it reminds us of exactly why we have been able to keep Australians safe,” Hunt told reporters in Melbourne . New Zealand and some Pacific Island countries are exempt from the new rules.
– China is making some of its travel restrictions tougher as coronavirus cases are on the rise in several northern provinces before the race for Lunar New Year. Next month’s festival is the most important time of the year for family reunions and is often the only occasion when many migrant workers can return to their rural homes. However, anyone wishing to do so this year will need a negative virus test the week before and may face sometimes costly restrictions, including quarantines, in some communities. The National Health Commission reported on Thursday another 126 cases of local transmission in the last 24 hours, the largest number, 68, in Heilongjiang province, part of the vast region formerly known as Manchuria. Commission spokesman Mi Feng also said that international experts who visited Wuhan had videoconferences with Chinese experts as part of their work. World Health Organizations are quarantined at the start of their trip to investigate the origins of the virus. Chinese authorities strictly control these researches, while promoting marginal theories that the virus may have originated abroad.