Pitufa.at

With 2700 cases/100.000 inhabitants, swamped hospitals and full ICU units the government has finally announced a new lockdown for 2 weeks. It’s a bit vague though: people are still allowed to go to work or shopping (necessary things), the international borders remain open, inter-island travel is limited to people with “important reasons” (which is a broad term as any business reason or family reason counts). Tourists are not encouraged to leave the country and still allowed to fly in, but will have to remain in their rooms or their cabins on cruise ships?!
No special restrictions for yachts are mentioned (yet). We hope that fellow cruisers will keep a low profile, respect the restrictions and don’t draw attention to the cruising community here. Otherwise there might be restrictions like during the last lockdown when swimming was forbidden, only one person per boat was allowed briefly ashore to go shopping, etc. Such measures don’t seem to focus on containing the virus, but more on making life miserable. The same goes for the locals of course: going fishing or paddling in a va’a is unlikely to do harm, but still forbidden. Looking out at the usually busy coastal road it seems there’s a little bit less traffic, but still lots of cars on the road…
Cases have been rising explosively over the past few weeks, the lockdown comes very late. We’ll see how things develop.