The Minister of Overseas Affairs, Sébastien Lecornu, announced to two local television stations the restriction of the compelling reasons to fly to French Polynesia.
Tourist trips to French Polynesia will be suspended from Wednesday due to the coronavirus pandemic, Overseas Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced on Sunday evening (Monday morning in Paris) on two local televisions.
Tourism has until now been one of the compelling reasons for traveling to Polynesia, in order to preserve its economy, but only family, health or professional reasons, accompanied by supporting documents, will now be accepted.
Occasionally reinforced aid
The Covid-19 epidemic is however ebbing in Polynesia. After a peak in November, when the community experienced one of the highest incidence rates in the world, this rate has fallen to 74 per 100,000 inhabitants and the community has only ten people in intensive care.
In his speech, Sébastien Lecornu acknowledged that the epidemic situation was improving in Polynesia. But he also underlined a still active circulation with 300 cases detected per week, an increase in contagions in the archipelago of the Leeward Islands and the possible arrival of variants.
The Minister of Overseas France specified that the aid already granted would be maintained, and “reinforced for the sectors in greatest difficulty”. The CEO of the company Air Tahiti Nui, Michel Monvoisin, wished on the TNTV channel that this aid would be “more marked” and declared that “2021 will probably be a worse year than 2020” for the airline sector.
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