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Once again, Phase Two for the reopening of limited flights to Guyana for citizens, permanent residents, international workers and diplomats has been pushed, tentatively, to October 1, 2020.
This was announced today by Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) Director of Aviation Safety and Security, Abraham Doris at the Department of Tourism’s zoominar on Borders and COVID-19.
“We’re still waiting on for the greenlight to indicate when it is that the airports will be reopened and, once that date is communicated, we’ll move straight into Phase two,” Doris said.
It was explained that even when Guyana heads into Phase Two it does not mean that there will be multiple scheduled flights as authorities must measure the number of flights that should come into the country against the capacity it has to manage possible cases which could slip through.
Doris said: “Our intent is to straddle the flights. We don’t want to start back scheduled operations to have large number of flights coming in and then to overwhelm the system. Given these controls and stages of checks, of sanitization, of submission of PCR tests as well as the health assessment and so on it will be time consuming, it will not be business as normal so, given those variables, we’ve got to be able to handle the influx of persons and, at the same time, we also want to be able to allow the health care system not be overwhelmed should they be a case or two that may slip through.”
Until then, Guyana is still in Phase One whereby repatriation flights are being conducted.
When Guyana arrives at Phase Three of its airport reopening, this will include limited flights and flights open to foreign nationals while the final phase, Phase Four, will include the removal of travel restrictions on various states.
