HPA issues guideline on reopening guesthouses in capital region

While the guesthouses in the capital are being allowed to restart operations today with the required approval from the Ministry of Tourism, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) has issued a guideline to do so.

The ‘guideline for reopening of tourist guesthouses and hotels on greater Male’ area’ was publicized on Sunday, and outlines the purposes for which guesthouses and hotels in the Male’ area could accommodate guests as well as pre-requisite for reopening and requirements to be fulfilled, among others.

While guesthouses can accommodate tourists, expatriate workers as well as visa holders for transit, quarantine or regular stay purposes, Maldivians who are allowed to stay at guesthouses are those unable to arrange quarantine at a house in the capital.

The tourism ministry must ensure that the guesthouses have designated places for isolation approved by HPA, quarantine facilities as well as access to medical care and a mechanism for daily monitoring of the medical condition of isolated patients, prior to giving a guesthouse the greenlight to restart operations. They must also have designated vehicles to transport Covid-19 cases and contacts to the designated places for isolation and quarantine.

Guesthouse are required to submit a Covid-19 safe plan to the ministry. The plan must include infection prevention measures, procedures for managing a symptomatic case as well as procedures for when a staff who exhibit symptoms or test positive for the infection.

While staff of guesthouses and hotels in the Male’ area are “at increased risk of exposure to Covid-10,” they are required to do PCR testing once every month.

The guideline also includes how to respond to a symptomatic tourist, as well as how to split the stay between a guesthouse in Male’ and a tourist establishment elsewhere.

Tourists are required to obtain a negative PCR result prior to exit from the resort or safari or tourist guesthouse island, which must also be presented to the guesthouse or hotel in Male’ if they are to transit in the city. They are allowed to exit the establishment during the stay and must follow the city’s Covid-19 safety rules including wearing face masks in public.

While tourists staying in the Male’ region are allowed short trips to safaris following approval from the tourism ministry, visits to resorts and inhabited islands are not allowed except within the arrangements of split stay.

Visitors who stay in the Male’ area during their entire duration of stay must do a PCR test prior to departure, if their duration of stay in Greater Male’ area is more than 48 hours. This is to be ensured by the respective guesthouse.

While Maldives reopened its borders as well as some resorts on July 15 after nearly four weeks of border closure, authorities began allowing guesthouses to restart operations on October 15. Tourist establishments in the capital city remained closed as majority of the Covid-19 cases detected in the country are in the region.