Mauritius stamps out Covid-19 – now African country needs tourists to return and lift its economy
- So far, Mauritius is a rare success story in Africa in the fight against the coronavirus, with no local infections in the past three months
- Prompt action kept infections to a minimum, but now the government is under pressure to restart tourism to get the island nation’s economy going
Mauritius was the first African country to get the coronavirus under control. Now its challenge is how to let the tourists that are its economic lifeblood back in.
Mauritius is one of the few places in the world that hasn’t had a locally transmitted infection in more than three months. It recorded its last Covid-19 death on April 27 and has managed to keep the total number of confirmed infections to just 344.
But in a country that relies heavily on tourism, the government is under increasing pressure to reopen its airport to tourists and rescue an industry that employs almost a fifth of its workforce. It’s not without risk: the Bahamas saw infections jump after opening up to travellers in July.
“We need an opening date so that the entire industry can work toward the target,” says Paul Jones, chief executive of The Lux Collective, which owns six high-end resorts and hotels in the country.
The success of Mauritius, an island nation with a population of 1.3 million, stems from the same factors that helped South Korea overcome its first outbreak: a strong central government, a well-funded health system and a containment strategy with widespread testing, contact tracing and quarantine measures.