or: Our wait for information continues

The government has announced that Mauritius will be open for tourism again on 15 July 2021. Reading the fine print, it means anyone arriving is allowed to stay within the confines of their hotel for 14 days before they are then allowed to explore the island. This is the first phase.

While they are in the hotel, they can make use of all the facilities except the hotel spa. They can use the beach within the hotel area, they can play golf if the hotel has its own course (on yet to be determined designated days as the courses are usually shared with locals who will then have the other days), they can use the pool and they can go to the hotel restaurants for meals.

No buffet meals.

Once the 14 days are finished (and if they have their final negative PCR test), they can either remain staying at this hotel and explore the island or they can change hotels.

It’s not yet clear how those who have finished their 14 days are going to be kept separate within the hotel to those who have arrived since and have only begun or a partly through their 14 days.

It’s assumed that after the 14 days, they will be allowed to go diving as the website where the conditions of travel are announced features quite a few underwater scenes and one even has a mask and snorkel logo.

If hotels are allowed to open on this date, it would be expected those in the Tourism Sector could begin working prior as these hotels would need to be cleaned, food brought in, lawns mowed, pools cleaned etc.

No announcements as yet.

Trying to log into the Mauritius Tourism Authority website this afternoon and am greeted with the message of “Account Suspended – contact your hosting provider for more information” There has been another site designed for tourists at mauritiusnow.com and this one still appears to be working however there is no information contained on it for those working in the sector aside from the press kit to let everyone know that the Tourism Sector was prioritized for vaccines. If they mean “prioritized after senior citizens, nurses, doctors, sick / disabled, teachers, people working in shops, markets etc that were part of the Phase 1 reopening after this second lockdown ended” then yes, this is true.

Tourism Sector people were eligible for vaccination from about 2nd June along with all other private sector employees.

Maybe there is another definition of “prioritize”?

In any case, it’s a bit unclear how all Tourism Sector employees will be fully vaccinated before the borders are open which is perhaps why all tourists need to be fully vaccinated.

Many of us have put in requests for injections as per the government instructions and are yet to receive even an auto generated acknowledgement that we are in a queue and the date will be advised.

We have no idea what injection we’ll receive or when.

There are rumours of people having waited three months since sending in their application (obviously not part of the Tourism Sector).

And so we wait.

Still.

In the meantime, there’s still quite a bit on my To Be Read List so I can’t complain too much!

Thanks to Guns n Roses for the title to this post.