ST JAMES, Jamaica – Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says regional and global multi-stakeholder policy collaboration is key in ensuring the Caribbean’s full recovery from the impact of COVID-19.

Bartlett  noted that COVID-19 has not only wreaked havoc on Caribbean economies, but has brought tourism to a point where “nothing will, probably, ever be the same again”.

He was speaking in his capacity as newly appointed chairman of the working group on accelerating the recovery of the airline and cruise industries in the post-pandemic stage of the Organization of American States inter-American committee on tourism.

Bartlett said tourism-dependent economies, such as those in the Caribbean, are being disproportionately impacted by the socio-economic fallout from the global health crisis.

Noting that the region has limited social safety nets, he argued that “this means that our people, economy and future are far more likely to be decimated by COVID-19 than nations with more diversified economies”.

Against this background, the minister said countries can no longer operate in isolation and independent of each other.

“We have to be smart and put our collective minds together to tackle this common enemy and prepare ourselves for that post COVID-19 era,” he emphasised.