SATSA Slams SA Government for Maintaining Negative PCR Test Requirement

SATSA has slammed South African Government’s dithering over the removal of the PCR test requirement for fully vaccinated inbound travellers, saying it is irrational, incomprehensible and prejudicial to rebuilding South Africa’s tourism sector. The Department of Health confirmed last week that it would be presenting various proposals to the NCCC which could, if approved, make it easier and cheaper to travel. Missing from the presentation was a definitive date when this would occur.

The Tourism Sector has for months been lobbying Government to allow resident and non-resident travellers to enter South Africa provided they are fully vaccinated, while still requiring non-fully vaccinated travellers to furnish a negative PCR test prior to departure. There is no scientific reason for the PCR test requirement for inbound travellers, says Professor Marc Mendelson, Professor of Infectious Diseases and Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases & HIV Medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, University of Cape Town.

“Unless we test every citizen and visitor every three to five days, the PCR test requirement for travel is meaningless. We do not have a travel-related surveillance programme and we don’t act on it, even if we did,” says Professor Mendelson. “We have been left to languish for months with promises that the PCR test requirement for fully vaccinated travellers was being reviewed. Considering there is no scientific base for this requirement in the first place, we find it unconscionable that Government’s intransigence over this decision has widespread implications for the survival of tourism businesses and consequently the preservation and growth of jobs,” says David Frost, CEO SATSA.

The PCR test requirement remains one of the last impediments to travel, based on cost, inconvenience and perceptions of uncertainty around travel postponement and cancellation should just one member of a travel group test positive. Further a vaccinated traveller poses minimal, to no, health risk to the destination population. Government has already taken a pragmatic approach to internal restrictions – no curfew no quarantine requirements for contacts, no contact tracing, reducing the isolation period and no isolation for asymptomatic cases.

“This progressive approach should be extended to removing the requirement for a negative PCR test for inbound fully vaccinated travellers,” says Frost. With non-vaccinated arrivals still providing the reassurance of a negative PCR test they are also overall less likely to be infected than virtually all South Africans, 99% + of whom will not have been recently tested.

Keeping the PCR test requirement in place simply makes no sense, Frost adds. “Our Government was righteously indignant with the knee-jerk reaction of governments to Omicron, placing South Africa on red lists overnight without basing the decision on science. Yet, when presented with the same compelling evidence, South Africa moves at a glacial pace to lift a requirement that other countries have recognised is completely redundant.”

It smacks of double standards, says a frustrated Frost, who believes there is no reason why the requirement should not be lifted immediately and promulgated in CoGTA State of Disaster Regulations, followed by clarifying Directions from the various Departments. “When our neighbours, such as Botswana, which understand their reliance on tourism as an economic sector, remove tests for vaccinated travellers, and we still require tests, they gain a competitive advantage over us as a destination,” Frost concludes.