Costa Rica Extends Border Closure

Once again Costa Rica has pushed back the dates to open up their borders to residents and foreigners. For now date has been pushed to August 1, and in addition specified countries where cases are spiked may not be permitted. Many travelers were hoping that borders would be opened on the scheduled date of July 1, however many had speculated that Costa Rica could make this decision after a spike in Covid-19 cases both locally and in the United States, where most travelers would be coming from. While the overall number of just over 2800 confirmed cases so far sounds small compared to other countries, nearly half of those cases have come in just the past 3 weeks. The Ministry of Health continues to play it very safe and is maintaining several restrictions thoughout the country and putting some areas on Alert status with even stricter enforced protocols.

In addition the Ministry of Health remains concerned with the increased cased in the U.S.  The United States is the country from which the most tourists visit Costa Rica — almost 1.3 million people last year.  The Health Minister earlier this month made it clear that their plan to open up international tourism will be a gradual process, yet the tourism sector and other business sectors are pushing to open things up so it remains to see how Costa Rica will proceed to continue to handle things over the next few months.