We would like to go back to our little spot, but I’m not real excited about it until I get a vaccine which seems likely early next year. Talking to a friend who is a belonger after many years there a couple days ago, he said they had secured a commitment from a company for enough vaccine for the BVI. I’d guess that is Astrazenica and they are nearing end of their trials or Novavak which is a little farther behind.

My friend who is in the hospitality business as dismayed as everyone here when they announced the reopening without the draconian rules. He did mention though what I always thought was a huge trap for politicians there. They only have seven ventilators in the territory. Once their population is vaccinated they will likely just require a negative test and/or proof of vaccination for travelers.

For the longest time we had few cases around here, fewer hospitalized and and handful of deaths. I indeed knew no one who had been affected thru the summer. That is not the case now. My wife’s aunt was hospitalized, her cousin was pretty ill as well. Our best friends father is on a ventilator fighting for his life and his wife is likely going to be hospitalized today. The local hospitals are filling up. One has a large floor dedicated to Covid patients and is full and are keeping others in a wing of the er until beds available. So this crap goes like wildfire, mask mandates or no when it finds a little opening.

If they open up under “reasonable” regulations of testing before travel or on arrival with no further restrictions I would bet they would have a lot of cases in a short while. I could be wrong, USVI I think is open with no quarantine, but the epidemic is just getting bad here. The fact is if you are a politician the only thing worse than not having tourism is being blamed for your constituents and relatives illness and demise.

My guess would be that terms to visit will be pretty strict until their population is vaccinated. Until then I could see them opening to visitors with proof of vaccination, a negative Covid test and a positive antibody test prior to travel. They would know the vaccine produced some immunity and you were not positive shortly before arrival. There would be no need to quarantine that traveler.