MONTEGO BAY, St James — Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett yesterday welcomed Jamaica’s upgrade from Level 3 to Level 2 designation by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but slammed what he said appeared to be dispirited declarations that the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is present in the island.

During Wednesday’s COVID Conversations, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton had said Jamaica was informed by United Kingdom authorities that a traveller who had returned to England after a short stay in Jamaica had tested positive for the Omicron variant of the virus.

The CDC upgrade was in recognition of the country’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 effectively.

“Jamaica was at [level] four, then Jamaica went to [level] three, and today, in the midst of this big call about one case or two that we might find in Jamaica, the United States is saying Jamaica is now level two. And so, I make the point that when we make certain comments the unintended consequences can be damaging,” Bartlett said at the official opening Sandals Royal Caribbean’s new High Grove Village in Montego Bay.

“So, while we are saying that, ‘My God, a little doom and gloom is coming,’ there are other good news that are on the horizon. Please, let us try to, in all cases, show the world how well we’re managing rather than tell the world how many variants we just get. That’s a huge and important position, because it changes the game in so many ways,” Bartlett argued.

He said that as “long as there is a gap in the vaccination take-up across the world, there are going to be mutations and variations that keep coming out.

“So waves are going to happen and, therefore, the world is getting to that point where it understands that living with the virus is a new norm,” Bartlett said as he scolded people he said were “attempting to almost glorify the fact that we have found a strain, as if to say this is the new desire, that we have to celebrate something new”.

He added: “The unintended impact of it is to destroy the credibility of our approaches, especially, for example, when we talk about a bubble that we have created here that the world is looking at, that when I travel they say how you do it, how did you get 1.6 million visitors to come to Jamaica in a year and a half after the pandemic? How did you get US$2 billion of earnings to happen and the jobs that come back?”

Earlier in a release from the Ministry of Tourism, Bartlett welcomed the new CDC designation.

“It is undoubtedly a show of confidence in the destination and the strict health and safety policies we have in place, particularly within th e Tourism Resilience Corridors. I commend our health authorities and the Jamaican people for their efforts to reduce COVID-19 infection and hospitalisation rates, which bodes well for our risk assessment rankings,” he said.

— Horace Hines