It seems one cannot underestimate the lack of advanced planning or even a cohesive plan of operation by the government of the bvi. I’m not talking about one party or the other. I don’t know the principles in either or if they differ in philosophy.

I was dismayed for those setting up travel via St. Thomas on a delayed March 1 opening when they pulled the rug out a few days ahead of the date they selected. There is nothing new upon which to change the date yesterday. There was little Covid in the bvi, when they chose the delay to March 1, there is little or none now. There was a lot of Covid in much of the world then and is now and likely will be quite a bit on April 15. No, it seems like decisions are made on the fly and they just pick another date out of the air so potential tourists keep booking and will arbitrarily decide whether to stick to a date, or a couple days before pull a Lucy and move the football a couple days before.

What is obvious is that in doing so they do great additional harm to a tourism product. It is almost as if they believe they are not competing for tourism.

I don’t blame them for the decision to protect their population from Covid. An island doing what they have done is pretty much the only way you can keep it from becoming an epidemic. With a poorly suited health system to deal with severe Covid cases it could have gotten ugly in a hurry.

What I fault them for is poor planning and seat of the pants decisions. They knew they were getting 8,000 doses of vaccine several weeks before it arrived, now going on a month ago. You would have thought in a small island nation, there would have been a coordinated plan ready to go prior to its arrival. You would have been wrong. There were pictures with the politicians receiving the vaccine bundle at the airport. Then they waited a week or ten days to give the first vaccination. If accurate last week after a couple weeks of vaccinations they had given just 200 doses. Now they are standing up other sites between ten and 3pm throughout the islands. Now in the US there have been hiccups with the rollout..but that’s in a country with 300 million people and several time zones and jurisdictions involved. The vaccines in use require much more stringent handling because of refrigeration. Our county is going through vaccine as quickly as they can get it and have several centers going daily for ten to 12 hrs a day. We got our second dose on Tuesday after a weeks snow delay.

The BVI has a small population they should have had prepared for and educated about the vaccine. Instead they seem to be on islon time.

I read last week that their minister of health had said they couldn’t fully open until they vaccinated 70 % of the population which he said would be July. Today in the Platinum news they are talking about the high numbers of locals, including first responders and frontline people refusing to get the shot. So it’s going to set up another moving of the goal posts or arbitrary decision affecting travel.

https://www.bviplatinum.com/news.php?articleId=32360