Once again, Latin America has been completely ignored and – for the most part – still languishes on the red list. Only those few countries that were never on the red list have managed to hold onto their amber status, as it is currently.
Comparing countries that have managed to come off the red list with destinations in Latin America makes the disparity in the grading system very apparent.
The best performing country in Latin America from a Covid point of view is Chile, so I’ll focus on that one. It’s not the only one doing really well, but is surely the most likely candidate for a red list regrade.
For a start, let’s look at Germany. Chile has a lower case rate than Germany, has a higher percentage of the population fully vaccinated, and carries out more testing than Germany. That sounds like a country on the ball.
Let’s now compare it with Sri Lanka, which is among eight being removed from the red list. Case rates are around six times higher in Sri Lanka than in Chile. The current death rate is six-and-a-half times higher there too, and the vaccination rate is lower.
I can only think that someone in the cabinet wants to go to Sri Lanka on holiday and not have to isolate in a terrible hotel on return – there is no other plausible explanation.
So where does this leave the Latin American travel trade? As TTG reported last week, the Treasury expects the travel industry to trade its way out of trouble, which is an admirable ambition – were it possible.
It might surprise the Treasury to learn that Latin America specialist operators don’t generally sell Turkey, the Maldives or Sri Lanka, and nor will they benefit from the increased demand for Europe thanks to the change in testing rules. They sell Latin America. And they can’t currently do that.
And why is the UK so far behind most EU countries in opening up? Is this the Brexit dividend? The vaccine dividend? One of Lata’s members recently likened Global Britain to Global North Korea.
How can Germany have a red list that has zero countries on it? It’s probably down to their generally reckless nature and laissez-faire attitude. Hmm.
Meanwhile, Brits flocked to Cornwall over the summer, driving up domestic infection rates to a level that would surely have been a contender for the red list were it a separate country.
Heaven forbid they’d instead gone to the wide-open spaces of Latin America with its lower-than-UK infection rates.
Danny Callaghan is chief executive of the Latin American Travel Association (Lata). Lata’s charitable foundation is currently raising money to support emergency Covid appeals in the region.
