COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) – Sri Lanka reopened foreign tourists on Thursday after a nearly ten-month pandemic closure that profoundly affected the lucrative Indian Ocean travel industry.
Full operations also resumed on Thursday at the island’s two international airports, hosting commercial flights.
Under the new protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19, tourists must be tested for the virus in their country 72 hours before their flight, when they arrive at their 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. Around 180 hotels have been set up for tourist accommodation.
The resumption of tourism follows a pilot project that began on December 26, in which 1,500 Ukrainian tourists visited Sri Lanka in this travel bubble.
The government closed the country to tourists last March when an outbreak of the virus appeared. International airports were closed, except for limited flights allowing Sri Lankans to return home.
Tourism is a vital economic sector for Sri Lanka, which accounts for approximately 5% of its gross domestic product and employs 250,000 people directly and up to 3 million indirectly. Hotels, other companies and their employees suffered paralyzing revenue losses.
Sri Lanka had fewer than 4,000 cases of coronavirus infection until October, when clusters focused on a garment 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 from Friday will have to test negative for coronavirus before leaving. Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Thursday that he had signed orders forcing international travelers to take a negative test three days after leaving Australia. All international passengers will also be required to wear masks on their flights. “Success at home, challenging challenges abroad, having new, more virulent strains emerging around the world, this reminds us precisely why we have been able to protect Australians,” Hunt told journalists in Melbourne. New Zealand and some Pacific Island countries are exempt from the new rules.
– China is making some of its travel restrictions even tougher, as coronavirus cases increase in several northern provinces ahead of the rush to travel for the lunar new year. Next month’s festival is the most important time of year for family reunions and is often the only time many migrant workers can return to their cottages. However, anyone who wants to do so this year will need a negative virus test during the previous week and may suffer from sometimes onerous restrictions, including quarantine, in some communities. The National Health Commission on Thursday reported an additional 126 cases of local transmission over the past 24 hours, the largest number, 68, in the northern province of Heilongjiang, part of the vast region formerly known as Manchuria. Commission spokesman Mi Feng also said international experts visiting Wuhan have had video conferences with Chinese experts as part of their work. World health organizations are in quarantine at the beginning of their journey to investigate the origins of the virus. Chinese officials have strictly controlled this research while promoting marginal theories that the virus could have originated abroad.