Tourism Leader Says Jamaica Should Move to Rapid Testing

Tourism leader says Jamaica should move to rapid testing. According to the Health Ministry, the island’s testing numbers are now up to 63,890.

President of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), Omar Robinson says PCR testing is expensive for the country and comes with many challenges.

He says Jamaica has experienced the negative impact of not having the required resources for effective testing leading to a severe backlog in testing and the inability to provide results in a timely manner for effective contact tracing.

Recently, a COVID-19 testing backlog of 10,000 samples was cleared. Omar Robinson says in an effort to prevent this from happening again, the Ministry needs to move to rapid testing for COVID-19.

He says one such test that should be considered is Abbot’s BinaxNow COVID-19 antigen test at a cost of 5 US dollars each.

Robinson says while accurate results are of great concern, there’s also a risk associated with PCR testing.

He also outlines that the US accounts for approximately 70% of visitor arrivals to Jamaica, adding that the government recently introduced PCR testing requirements for all Americans desirous of visiting the country.

Robinson says while the PCR tests are available in some cities, it is still challenging to get a test done in others. This is where this new rapid test can be used to further mitigate the risk to travelers.