TAMPA, Fla. — Mexico has been a top vacation spot for people in the Tampa Bay area looking to get away during the pandemic, but now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a level four warning as the coronavirus spikes there.
“It’s our top destinations for where we are sending Floridians at this time,” said Don O’Neal, who owns Travelworld Travel agency locations in Tampa Bay.
O’Neal was surprised to see the warning from the CDC urging Americans to stay away from Mexico citing COVID-19 concerns.
“We have a worse scenario here than they do,” he said. “And yet, we’re getting these critical warnings about Mexico.”
O’Neal says in the past three months, his travel agency has sent more than three dozen clients to the Cancún area alone.
“As far as we know none of our travelers have returned with COVID or any signs of COVID,” he said. “They said the resorts are following the guidelines. People were wearing masks. They’re keeping a 6-foot distance. There are hand sanitizers available everywhere.”
The timing is particularly tough at Tampa International Airport, where just two weeks ago, JetBlue announced the very first nonstop flight between Tampa and Cancún.
“I think the timing is horrifically bad,” O’Neal said. “Because there’s a big push to send people to Mexico right now.”
The Taylor sisters, Tyneisha and Chakai were heading from Tampa to Dallas on Tuesday. They’ve been traveling more than ever, they say, taking advantage of lower airfares.
The CDC alert, they said, actually puts Mexico on their radar.
“With everything going on with the whole shut down they have dropped prices places. And somewhere like Mexico? They are going to probably give incentives to come,” Chakai said. “We live in Detroit, and Detroit was a hotspot at one point too. So, it’s kind of, you just have to be safe.”
“I would treat it like any place else,” Tyneisha said.
O’Neal agrees. He thinks it’s ironic the CDC would post its travel alert citing Mexico’s 1 million COVID-19 cases when Florida alone has documented that many.
“I’m questioning where the concentration of the outbreak is,” O’Neal said. “Based on what I’m seeing here in the U.S., I would tend to think it’s in the larger cities, predominantly, with some of the smaller cities.”
In fact, O’Neal says several European countries and many in the Caribbean still won’t accept tourists from the U.S. because of the high rate of COVID-19 here.
For now, the CDC alert regarding Mexico is a warning, he says, not a travel ban.
O’Neal says one reason Mexico remains a popular tourist destination is that it currently does not require a COVID-19 test to travel there. But as cases surge, rules can change. So, it’s best to check with a travel agent to see what the restrictions and requirements are just before heading anywhere.
“I think we’re going to see a lot of this up and down warnings,” O’Neal said. “Warnings put up and warnings pulled down. Warnings pulled back. It’s going to ebb and flow as we go through the winter season here in the northern hemisphere.”
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