{"id":323225,"date":"2020-05-20T06:00:33","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T20:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=323225"},"modified":"2020-05-20T06:00:33","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T20:00:33","slug":"cota-to-help-increase-testing-access-to-the-vulnerable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/cota-to-help-increase-testing-access-to-the-vulnerable\/","title":{"rendered":"COTA to help increase testing access to the vulnerable"},"content":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres gets off one of the vans of the Commonwealth Office of Transit Authority that brought passengers to the Alternative Care Site at Kanoa Resort. (Iva Maurin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The COVID-19 Task Force is making the community-based testing even more accessible through the Commonwealth Office of Transit Authority.<\/p>\n

COTA\u2019s entire fleet has been activated to transport individuals from the airport to the quarantine site and to support the transportation needs for persons under investigation to the isolation facility. <\/p>\n

In Monday\u2019s House of Representatives committees on Commerce and Tourism meeting, task force chair Warren Villagomez said that action items are in place to reach out to the CNMI\u2019s vulnerable population, as well as to get to the villages. \u201cWe are\u2026working along with COTA to try to bring our elderlies and the community that don\u2019t have access to the testing [and] also access to Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rep. Joseph Lee Pan Guerrero (R-Saipan) urged the task force to help families and individuals who may not have access to vehicles. \u201cGive the community that security that you\u2019re there to make sure that everybody get tested, and we want people in the community to be tested, so we can get that number to where we want it, so we can hopefully open domestically first, before we start considering [opening] international,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

For safe transport, COTA has taken measures, with vehicles going through a decontamination process, to ensure passengers are safe while aboard, assured COTA special assistant Alfreda P. Camacho in a separate interview. \u201cWe take it very seriously. Safety is our first priority,\u201d she said, and added that they have gotten together with the COVID-19 Task Force to get tested together as a group.<\/p>\n

Villagomez added that the task force is working with Department of Community and Cultural Affairs Secretary Robert Hunter for a listing of the vulnerable population, \u201cnot just the elderly but the folks that are compromised, home-bound population, to come up with different ways [for] testing and access to care at [the Commonwealth Health Center].\u201d<\/p>\n

Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 Economic Recovery Team, with CHCC chief executive officer Esther Mu\u00f1a, has been highlighting the importance of community-based testing as key to gradually lifting restrictions that are in place, as well as to reopening the CNMI back to tourists.<\/p>\n

CHCC will be going out and bringing nurses to assist the island\u2019s vulnerable populations. To date, the hospital has collected 3,420 specimens, which according to Mu\u00f1a, is at about 5% of the CNMI population. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The COVID-19 Task Force is making the community-based testing even more accessible through the Commonwealth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":323228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[460],"class_list":["post-323225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cota"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323225","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\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}