Govt. decides to re-open airports on January 21

The Cabinet of Ministers this week arrived at a final decision to re-open the country’s international airports for commercial purposes on January 21, with necessary safeguards in place to prevent COVID-19 from spreading in the country. 

Co-Cabinet spokesman Udaya Gammanpila made this announcement at the Cabinet press briefing held last morning. 

The government was dilly-dallying on a specific date to re-open the country’s borders for unrestricted air travel this January, but Gammanpila unequivocally stated that the Cabinet of Ministers agreed on January 21. Responding to a question by a reporter whether the government was trying to put the country in jeopardy by opening the country for tourists, Gammanpila said it was in the best interest of the thousands of local residents who depend on tourism for a living that the government made the decision to welcome tourists. 

Asked if the government is discriminating the local residents by having a different law for tourists, he said there is nothing called two laws to tourists and the local residents, but added that tourism is one of the few most significant areas in the Sri Lankan economy and is too good to be ignored. 

Responding to another question if the government has made a wrong decision by getting Ukrainian tourists into the country when Ukraine itself went into a lockdown, Minister Gammanpila said it was a false accusation to claim that the visiting tourists are a source for spreading the virus and none has come from Ukraine since it went into lockdown. 

He said out of the 1, 004 Ukrainian tourists Sri Lanka welcomed, only 3 were confirmed COVID-19 positive, which is an insignificant number.  

Further he said there is no way the visiting tourists could transmit the decease to local residents as they travel in biological bubbles and that makes it not compulsory for them to wear facemasks when they are together.