Bali welcomes back foreign travelers as COVID cases subside

DENPASAR, Indonesia (AP) — The Indonesian resort island of Bali welcomed international travelers to its shops and white-sand beaches for the first time in more than a year Thursday — if they're vaccinated, test negative, hail from certain countries, quarantine and heed restrictions in public.

President Joko Widodo credited Bali's high vaccination rate, and the country's COVID-19 caseload has also declined considerably. Indonesia has had around 1,000 cases a day in the past week after peaking around 56,000 daily in July.

Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport will welcome new foreign arrivals from 19 countries that met World Health Organization’s criteria such as having their COVID-19 cases under control, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the government minister who leads the COVID-19 response in Java and Bali, said in a statement late Wednesday.

He said all international flight passengers must have proof they've been vaccinated two times, test negative for the coronavirus upon arrival in Bali and undergo a 5-day quarantine at designated hotels at their own expense. They'll also have to follow stringent rules at hotels, in restaurants and on beaches.

“We have to do this with caution because we need to stay alert,” Pandjaitan said.

Tourism is the main source of income on the idyllic “island of the gods” that is home to more than 4 million people, who are mainly Hindu in the mostly Muslim archipelago nation. Bali's tourist areas were deserted two decades ago after visitors were scared off by deadly terror attacks that targeted foreigners, but the island has worked to overcome that image.

More than 6 million foreigners arrived in Bali each year prior to the pandemic.

Foreign tourist arrivals dropped six-fold from 6.2 million in 2019 to only 1 million in 2020, while 92,000 people...