The country’s healthcare system is in crisis, and there continues to be an uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 on New Providence, with hospitalizations also high on Grand Bahama.

July is now the deadliest month of the third wave, and the country’s nurses are once again paying the ultimate price on the front line of the pandemic.

With no bed space, shortages of nurses and doctors, and public hospital services greatly reduced, the increased threat of non-COVID related deaths for babies, pregnant mothers, those with chronic diseases, and those in need of critical care, is very real.

Prime Minister and competent authority Dr. Hubert Minnis, through his Health Minister Renward Wells, announced new restrictions that were to come into effect this morning, but those restrictions do not address the gaping hole of COVID risk left wide open at the country’s borders both external and domestic.

That risk is the continuation of testing exemptions for fully vaccinated travelers.

Real world data coming out of countries with high vaccination rates, suggest that it is not as rare to contract COVID-19 once fully vaccinated as some officials in government would have us believe.

Anticipated vaccine protection against severe COVID illness and death is out of the reach of most residents, because there are insufficient vaccines available in the country to administer to those who want them.

The Bahamas very clearly has no systemic capacity to bear the risk of imported COVID variants that are evading vaccines, and resulting in exponential spread due to their high levels of transmissibility.

Even developed nations including the United States, which have a far greater degree of healthcare capacity than The Bahamas, are not bearing such a risk at their borders, whether the international traveler is a citizen or not.

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