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After soaking the sun for seven days on the island’s southern beaches guarded by security forces to prevent natives access to the hotels’ otherwise public beach fronts, the group — 185 of them — that flew in on Monday, will visit the Yala National Park, the elephants transfer home Athurusevana, Uda Walawe, Kaudulla National Park, Minneriya, the elephants orphanage at Pinnawela, Sigiriya, Dambulla and the Dalada Maligawa. They can also choose three other sites from within the Cultural Triangle.

Presumably, all these sights will be made out of bounds to Lankans to pave way for these tourists to have exclusive rights over these sacred sites, including the Temple of the Tooth during their visitations.

But one swallow does not make a summer. Nor does one group of Ukrainian tourists amount to a tourist invasion. Thus the arrival of the first tour group will be followed by more group arrivals in 10 plane loads in the days ahead. The second wave came on Tuesday bringing 204 Ukrainians who will follow the same itinerary as made out for them by their Sri Lankan minders. The programme, they say, will end on January 19.

For these Ukrainians coming in from the cold of their East European country, ten times larger than Lanka but only twice bigger in population, the singular opportunity to bath in warm sun rays on sun drenched private beaches on a dusky tropical isle widely promoted as the Garden of Eden; and transported in the Chariots of the Gods to glimpse the grandeur of the past, at a time when the world is reeling from a COVID pandemic and shutting and bolting every door and window to all alien visitors, must be the stuff of fairy tales reminiscent of how Alice found a wonderland through serendipity.

Especially when the spectre of COVID is lurking and instils the fear of infection into all; and the common response is to flee the terror as they have done to find an exotic haven — transient though it may well be — in Lanka’s warm embrace.

For if Lanka’s 21 million populace has reported a total of 40,000 COVID cases last year, then Ukraine’s 44m populace has totaled just over 1million COVID cases since March, with 300,000 presently active cases to Lanka’s 6,940 active cases. Though the population is only twice that of Lanka, Ukraine has mourned over 18,000 deaths while Lanka only passed the 200 death toll this week. And the daily confirmed cases in Ukraine in the days surrounding the arrival of the first Ukrainian flock on Monday are:

•  On 25 December 11,035 new cases and 186 new deaths in Ukraine while in Lanka 592 new cases and 1 new death
•  On 26 December 7,709 new cases and 121 new deaths in Ukraine while in Lanka 551 new cases and 1 new death
•  On 27 December 6,113 new cases and 72 new deaths in Ukraine while in Lanka 598 new cases and 1 new death
•  On 28 December 4,385 new cases and 75 new deaths in Ukraine while in Lanka 674 new cases and 4 new deaths
•  On 29 December 6,988 new cases and 232 new deaths in Ukraine while in Lanka 704 new cases and 3 new deaths

Tally for five days: Ukraine 36,230 cases with 686 deaths: Lanka 3,119 cases with 10 deaths.

With such alarming figures revealing Ukraine’s COVID swamped state, the question arises: Is the Government dicing with the nation’s health by rashly opening its doors to hundreds of tourists coming from such a hotbed of COVID contagion, where the daily average of new cases are only marginally less than Lanka’s total number of active cases?

BITTEN BY THE TRAVEL BUG: Lanka says ahoy to the first flock of Ukraine tourists who landed at Mattala Airport on Monday for a spot of sun, sand and sight seeing

In the reckless pursuit of artificially bringing tourists at any cost to erect the facade of a thriving tourist sector during a worldwide COVID pandemic, has the Government paused to consider what the flip side will be if this impetuous exercise, God forbid, were to result in a new islandwide Ukraine cluster. Were to trigger a major health catastrophe?

Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga obviously thinks not.

“The Lankan people have nothing to be scared of,” he said to the media minutes before his much valued guests of honour arrived at the Mattala Airport aboard a Ukraine flight on Monday. “All the government health guidelines will be followed strictly to the letter. We have done this after taking the responsibility of ensuring that the Ukrainian tourists will not get COVID from Lankans nor will Lankans get it from the Ukrainians. In fact, the tourists will visit the designated sites and will not come into contact with any Lankans. The tourists will be travelling in the government health guidelines ‘Bio Bubble’.”

All very well and, no doubt assuring, but what if the bubble were suddenly to burst?

Not even a few minutes had elapsed after the first batch had arrived when the first burst occurred at the Mattala Airport itself,

The tourists may have been duly protected in the imaginary travel bubble the thoughtful minister had cocooned them in, but the local dance troupe giving a performance was certainly not. They lay exposed to any cough or sneeze, to any fluttering virus still floating in that air conditioned terminal building.

Young girls, clad as hill country tea pluckers performed a song and dance act for the delectation of the visitors not on an elevated platform with the required social distancing kept but on the same level as the Ukraine tourists and danced past them with less than a yard’s distance. Worse. None of them wore the mandatory face mask.

In the officials’ eagerness, perhaps, to ensure the tourists enjoyed the entertainment fare to the limit, none had thought of the safety of this young bevy of local dancing damsels.

If this major puncture in the bio bubble could occur just minutes after the minister had guaranteed no risk of virus transmission would be allowed to take place between the foreigners and the locals since all precautions against it had been taken, who can vouch for future bursts when the guard is lowered and the mask slips and, unwittingly, contact is made between the forbidden parties?

Chief Epidemiologist Dr. Sudath Samaraweera was asked of this breach in health protocol. He agreed there had been negligence and expressed the hope these mistakes will be corrected in the future and that practice will make it perfect.

But as Dr. Samaraweera surely knows handling the present COVID pandemic is no trainee obstacle course to be perfected through trial and error, since the virus grants no mercy to any lapse, however slight. For all the hype of travelling in a bubble of health guidelines guaranteeing COVID proof protection, Murphy’s First Law should not be forgotten: ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.’

The Minister also told the media at Mattala Airport, “Merely because tourists didn’t come to Lanka didn’t mean there were no COVID clusters. There was the Minuwangoda cluster. The Peliyagoda cluster.”

The Minuwangoda or the Brandix cluster erupted on October 4 and also led to the Peliyagoda cluster. Together, these two clusters engulfed the entire island with no district spared. Colombo has been turned to Lanka’s COVID capital with confirmed cases in the city topping 17,000.

Before the eruption, Lanka was in the front seat of COVID control having only 125 active cases on October 4, three months ago. But overnight the situation changed dramatically, forcing the government to keep Lanka open for business rather than see the economy crash beyond redemption. The search for the origin of the Brandix cluster was launched and a full investigation was soon underway.

Om December 7, COVID Prevention Minister Sudharshani Fernandopulle announced in parliament the investigators’ findings. She told the House: “It was discovered that a member of the Ukraine airline team who was at the Ramada Hotel in Seeduwa had been infected; and later, when the staff members of the hotel were tested, several of them had tested positive. It was also discovered that there had been contact between these workers and staff members of the Minuwangoda Brandix factory. It is highly likely that the Minuwangoda cluster had originated from the Ukrainian national.”

Thus, perhaps, it can be seen why there is no room for trial and error, of learning on the job. One man, a Ukrainian, has now been identified as the individual responsible for igniting Lanka’s second COVID conflagration which frontline workers are still fighting to douse.

On Wednesday, the ‘Ukraine tourists’ experiment, which had been hailed as the harbinger of tourism’s revival, suffered a major blow when it was discovered that three Ukraine tourists had tested positive for COVID. On Thursday, another three Ukrainians also tested positive. Presumably the obvious first contacts of those plagued will remain confined to their hotel rooms in self-isolation for the next 14 days.

Or is it seven days isolation only? According to the official travel itinerary, these Ukrainian tourists seem to have been granted special dispensation to spend only seven days quarantine at hotels and, thereafter, take the sightseeing grand tour, instead of the 14 days quarantine period confined to hotel rooms for Lankan returnees.

But what of others in the group who, though not obvious first contacts, may have, nevertheless, come into close contact with the afflicted unbeknown to themselves? Having slipped through the net, will they, too, escape future PCR detection as the six COVID hit tourists escaped PCR detection before boarding the aircraft at Ukraine or on arrival at Mattala Airport? If so, they’ll be free, closeted in an imaginary bubble or no, to wander through sacred sites and elephant orphanages where, despite ministerial assurance that ‘locals are locals and tourists are tourists and never the twain shall meet’, contact with locals will be unavoidable.

Surely, the Malwatte monks will not desert the Sri Dalada and leave the premises for a group of Ukraine tourists to wander about unsupervised? Or will the mahouts at Pinnawela leave their charges for a tea break for tourists to freely mingle with unchained elephants?

In the midst of this seeming disaster when hopes of tourism’s grand renaissance lie wrecked again by a COVID outbreak amongst the trailblazers, Tourism Minister Ranatunga remains unshaken and unbowed. In an optimistic spirit, he says this incident does not call for a halt to the present operation and that it will not deter him from continuing it. “We expected this eventuality and we are prepared to handle it.”

Good. To strive undaunted and not to yield at the first shock of trouble is a quality to be hailed amongst the President’s knights in Camelot’s cabinet. But, given the present precarious ground situation, is it wise? Doesn’t prudence dictate that in this instance, discretion is the better part of valour? By all means kick start tourism. But is this the right time?

With medical resources taxed to the extreme, with hospitals, even the makeshift ones at former quarantine centres, stressed to the brink of calamity by the COVID surge, with frontline health workers under enormous strain, it has been, and it is a continuing Herculean task to cope with the increasing numbers that fall victim to the coronavirus.

In this unfolding grim scenario, can Lanka survive another COVID cluster?  Can she afford another one to sprout and cast its blight from a mushroom cloud enveloping the whole island? Can the camel’s back remain unbroken, if another cluster proves to be the last straw?