Originally Posted by
qwerty
We were in Jamaica during 3 of the 3 day lockdowns. They were announced two days before the beginning of our trip. This was our fourth trip since the pandemic broke out world wide. Since we are in the midst of building a house in Treasure Beach, we haven't been able to postpone. The lockdowns - plus two (non-lockdown) days lost to the downpours that Ida caused - did reduce how much we were able to accomplish this trip. The positive outcome of the lockdowns is that we found out that the restaurant at the Negril Beach Club (Thumbs Up) is actually quite good and we'll be patronizing it more on future trips. The lockdowns were very hard even on the restaurants that were allowed to be open (on hotel grounds) as they tended to run out of things by the third day.
We find that protocols for entering businesses are generally good (although taking temperatures in such a hot climate can be problematic and not necessarily helpful) and feel every bit as safe as in the US. There are about the same percentage of people not wearing masks or wearing them improperly, although our latest trip it did seem that there was more/better mask wearing. We try to encourage locals we converse with to get vaccinated and the taxi drivers we use, especially for long trips (MBJ-Treasure Beach; Treasure Beach-Negril and Negril-MBJ), are vaccinated and we all wear masks and have the windows open. We have always purchased travel insurance and now make sure that it covers COVID related illness. I was more worried about changing planes and doing immigration/customs in Miami than spending 3 weeks in Jamaica.
