 last year, more than 31 million people visited the Caribbean. Coronavirus has deprived the region of tens of billions of dollars shutting down airports and cruise ship docks and closing restaurants and shops. Well, one place where the effect of the pandemic has been devastating is St Lucia. Two thirds of the economies were reliant on tourism. Let's speak to the Prime Minister of St Lucia, Alan Shastane, who joins us live from the capital. Prime Minister, welcome here to the programme. As I mentioned there, 65% of your economies were reliant on tourism. Tell me, first of all, the impact coronavirus has had. Well, it's been devastating economically. Our tax revenue is down anywhere between 50 and 60%. Unemployment, which we had being reduced from 25% to 16% now is right back up again because clearly with the hotel sector being closed. And that was certainly in April and May, but we've now seen a slight recovery in some of those numbers moving forward. Visitor numbers are massively down. 89% from last year. What do you need to do to restore your biggest driver of your economy, do you think? Well, look, we took a decision very early that we realised that we had to learn to coexist with COVID. So the idea of staying in a permanent state of lockdown was not an option that was available to us. And in doing so, we developed some pretty interesting protocols that have worked. And that's the benefit that we have of a small island state. We've seen an immediate success. So we've actually had our doors open since June 4. We've had 6,000 arrivals since then. One-third of our hotels have reopened. And since we have been doing that, the critical component to it has been pretesting. So we did develop a protocol for the Caribbean. Some of our neighbouring islands decided to test on arrival. Salusia chose to stick to our initial instinct, which was to test before people came. And since then, none of the tourists that have arrived have exposed any of our locals to any COVID. And what we have also done is insisted our nationals returning home remain in an administered quarantining. And that certainly has made a big difference in our numbers. We've come back to that point in a moment, but we talked about tourism. When you look also in your economy and your exports, things like the banana industry, mangoes, we've seen a big impact there as well. At what stage do you have to look at the whole way that you run the economy and perhaps rethink going forward? We don't think we've reached that point yet. We have seen in crises of the past when we had 9-11, we had the financial crisis. And I believe the same is going to be true here. The Caribbean in absolute terms, the amount of tourists that we get is a small portion of global tourism. And so even though we're seeing a global contraction in the industry, given the success that the Caribbean has had in large, Salusia and some of the islands in particular, we think that we're going to see a rebound in that sector. Certainly from an export perspective, English people, thank God, are still eating bananas and we're still distributing our bananas and it has not affected the output here. You talk about the number of cases you have and you have done remarkably well. 26 cases, no deaths. And a lot of other countries around the world will be looking at that enviously. But does it make sense to try to get tourists back? Your principal market is the U.S. and we've seen COVID rip through America. Isn't it a risk trying to encourage those tourists to come back from the States? So we don't have to guess anymore. So as I said to you, San Lucia has been open since June 4. We started receiving American passengers or visitors from July. We've had over 6,000 arrivals. They have coexisted with our British tourists as well. And it has exposed no threat to the country. And so with the protocol of pre-testing before they get on the plane, I mean, it only makes sense. I was in the airline industry. Can't be flying planes two thirds full because the economics of that just doesn't make sense. Causing persons to be pre-tested a certain number appeared before getting on the plane, I think brings confidence back to the tourists themselves as well as protecting the state. And I also heard the idea of people being pre-tested before they go back in order not have to do the quarantine. I want to say that San Lucia supports that policy strongly. We've shown that we have implemented that successfully in this country. We think it's just crazy that the airline industry has not adopted pre-testing as a prerequisite before getting on a plane. Let me turn to travel restrictions that you touch upon because it is such a patchwork. Each country introducing different restrictions. Would it help if it was more joined up in terms of an international approach to travel and the various restrictions that are in place? Absolutely. Look, you said the number. There's 30 million people traveling to the Caribbean on an annual basis, and that's just the Caribbean. I think if we're to see a return globally to travel, that we need to do what happened after 9-11. Imagine after 9-11 if, in fact, we did not have the security protocols in place. I don't think it would have recovered as quickly. I think the same thing applies here. Economically, for both sides of the pond, both in the U.K. as well as in the Caribbean, there's a significant benefit if we can now bring people's confidence back to traveling. And that's certainly going to stimulate. Sadly, I've had many discussions with many of the political leaders and policy makers in the U.K. And what they fail to understand is that a long haul of vacationing is actually an industry in itself. I mean, two-thirds of the money that a British tourist spends in St. Lucia comes back to the U.K. It's your airline. It's your tour operators, your travel agency. It's your insurance companies. And so there's a win-win situation here when we can now see the confidence in traveling and returning. Well, Prime Minister, we're almost at the end of our program, so I'm going to end it there. But thank you for taking time to speak to us and joining us on BBC World News. Thank you so much. Thank you.