{"id":318333,"date":"2020-03-02T06:03:25","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T20:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=318333"},"modified":"2020-03-02T06:03:25","modified_gmt":"2020-03-01T20:03:25","slug":"ipi-employees-patrons-okd-to-wear-masks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/ipi-employees-patrons-okd-to-wear-masks\/","title":{"rendered":"IPI employees,  patrons OK\u2019d to wear masks"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_318334\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-318334\" style=\"width: 224px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Edward-Deleon-Guerrero-mug.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-318334\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Edward-Deleon-Guerrero-mug-224x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-318334\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Edward Deleon Guerrero<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Commonwealth Casino Commission has issued a waiver to allow the employees and casino gaming patrons of the Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC to wear surgical masks as a safety measure due to the coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview last Thursday, CCC executive director Edward Deleon Guerrero said they don\u2019t order IPI employees and its gaming patrons to wear surgical masks, but have allowed them to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Not hats, though. Deleon Guerrero said they cannot allow employees and patrons to wear hats because of the very detailed surveillance system in place in the casino.<\/p>\n<p>He said it is his understanding that the coronavirus threat has already closed down 41 casinos in Macau. The coronavirus first arose in Wuhan, China, and has rapidly spread worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>Deleon Guerrero said that Macau first started by requiring all employees and patrons to wear masks. Macau then realized that\u2019s probably not going to be effective enough, so they closed down all 41 casinos, as per regulations, he said, adding that Macau has already lifted those restrictions and allowed the casinos to re-open a few days ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd it\u2019s my understanding that some have opened and some have voluntarily decided not to open,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Deleon Guerrero pointed out that, as per many health advisories, there\u2019s a greater chance of spreading the virus whenever there is a large number of people congregating in one confined location, like in a casino.<\/p>\n<p>He said CCC actually has a policy that employees and patrons are not supposed to wear mask or hats or anything but the CCC gave IPI patrons and employees and CCC employees this exemption and allow the surgical masks as they think it\u2019s prudent to do something to make sure CCC and IPI\u2019s own staff would not contract the virus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo that\u2019s an issue that we\u2019re saying, \u2018Well, this is\u2026a safety issue, it\u2019s a common-sense issue.\u2019 So we did issue a waiver to allow people to protect themselves,\u201d Deleon Guerrero said.<\/p>\n<p>He said only surgical masks are allowed, not other types of masks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Commonwealth Casino Commission has issued a waiver to allow the employees and casino gaming&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12497,309],"class_list":["post-318333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-ipi","tag-ok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}