A COVID-19 insurance cover of $60,000 has been launched by local insurer FijiCare Insurance Ltd marking the first ever insurance product designed specifically for the pandemic.
FijiCare executive director Avi Raju said the product was available for visitors to Fiji with the intention to cover health and medical bills once a tourist tests positive for COVID-19.
“The Fiji Care COVID insurance is a specific a COVID only insurance product for inbound visitors to Fiji,” he said. “The cover starts when you test positive for COVID-19 while you are in Fiji.
“It does not cover for any testing and other events which are part of the standard travel protocols that are mandated by Fiji and other countries.
“The product we are launching has a cover of Fijian $60,000 which includes coverage for events such as isolation coverage or quarantine, PCR testing, transportation, medical assistance or medical expenses, trip curtailment and repatriation of what all remains.
“The cover is for 15 days from the day of arrival or the day of travel.”
He said as COVID-19 insurance was mandatory for all incoming tourists, the company had a number of important points to consider when the product was being designed.
“The product must be easily available, the purchase process must be quick and simple so in terms for the design of this product, it takes about two minutes to enter all of your data and for the payment process.”
While launching the product, Minister for Economy and Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said they welcomed the company’s decision to produce a product that covered COVID-19 positive visitors.
“The reality is, some tourists are out in Mamanuca and they need to be urgently moved to the mainland but somebody has to pay for it,” he said.
“We’ll of course we are morally and obliged to do so because we cannot say to them ‘you are stuck out here and we are not going to send the helicopter over’.
“So we wanted to ensure that we cover ourselves.
“Government cannot continuously pay for products that the private sector also benefits from.
“I think the tourism sector needs to understand that they need to also share the risk because we are also most definitely sharing the risk too.
“So by having an insurance product, it gives us a level of comfort.”
