There will be no pretesting or quarantining of visitors to Jamaica when the island reopens its borders for international travel, on June 15, instead safety measures are being implemented at ports of entry. Montego Bay Jamaica Airports limited appears to be ahead with its preparation already in its final stages, according to its CEO Shane Munroe.
“Some changes that you will see on arrival to the airport when you are departing is that the check-in area will have the traveling public only and airport staff entering the check-in terminal,” says Munroe. ” Where the traveling public has reduced mobility we will accommodate persons to assist them but we are going to ask friends and well-wishers not to enter the check-in area.”
The reason behind this move is to enforce physical distancing – a measure required to prevent the spread of Covid-19 – and to reduce congestion in the terminal building.
“We have as mentioned on the screens the signs for best practices, social distancing, the mandatory use of masks that will be required for everyone entering the airport and the signs on the floors and this continues throughout the airport terminal – the boarding pass checkpoint, at the gates, the baggage service desk. You will see the same at immigration and customs as well,” Munroe explains.
All arriving passengers will be also screened with thermal temperature scanners.
Munroe says the passenger traffic is expected to be low at first but numbers will gradually increase, allowing administration to fine tune processes.
“We took advantage of this downtime to carry out certain maintenance activities that would have otherwise proved disruptive. We pushed on some of our construction programmes , again they would have been disruptive and we think this was a good time to take advantage of the downturn. So a huge project that we are now pursuing is a expansion of the departures area and the commercial programme.”
Jamaica closed its borders on March 24 to flatten the curve of the coronavirus disease, which has infected hundreds. The new re-entry protocols are expected to aid in containing Covid-19 while restoring the tourism sector.
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