Gov. Ralph DLG Torres maintains that the CNMI should be taken out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s health advisory that designates the islands as a \u201chigh-risk\u201d area for COVID-19, along with other Pacific Islands.<\/p>\n
Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Esther Muna, according to the governor, has been in communication with the CDC to address the concern. <\/p>\n
\u201cMeeting a number of population puts us in the same category with others. We\u2019re making the argument [that] even if you break it down for percentages for testing in the community, we have the highest percent in testing throughout the nation than anyone,\u201d Torres said. <\/p>\n
As a high-risk area, CDC recommended that people avoid all non-essential travel to the islands, and for older adults and anyone with certain underlying medical condition to consider postponing all travel, including essential travel, to the CNMI. The CDC advisory states that resources may be limited should they get sick on the islands.<\/p>\n
However, the governor argues that there is another list that designates the CNMI as a low-risk destination.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to stick to one, and we\u2019re arguing that as well. We\u2019ve been going to different tourist destinations to look at our numbers. Our number is at [49] today, and yet, we\u2019re being considered high-risk. What is then the number to consider as low risk?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the numbers across the world, other than Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, and American Samoa where they literally stopped any international flight, we\u2019re very safe,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Prior to the CDC\u2019s high-risk advisory, for the past months, the CNMI has been coordinating with other \u201clow-risk\u201d countries on a \u201cbubble model\u201d for travel. This is where governments from each of the low-risk countries, states, or territories form an agreement that sets up how each of its respective citizens are going to be handled, and how they will be provided entry to each other\u2019s country, without the impact of quarantine. <\/p>\n
In an earlier interview, Alex Sablan, of the Governor\u2019s Economic Task Force, explained that because no country, territory, nor state want their citizens to be overly impacted by costs or processes that would further delay them in their ability to travel, protocols and mitigation measures are being discussed regarding bubble tourism. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres maintains that the CNMI should be taken out of the Centers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":328171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328311","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=328311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}