{"id":355981,"date":"2021-11-17T06:05:56","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T20:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=355981"},"modified":"2021-11-17T06:05:56","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T20:05:56","slug":"no-quarantine-for-fully-vaxxed-travelers-in-vaccinated-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/no-quarantine-for-fully-vaxxed-travelers-in-vaccinated-homes\/","title":{"rendered":"No quarantine for fully vaxxed travelers in vaccinated homes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Esther L. Mu\u00f1a, second from right, makes a presentation during yesterday\u2019s \u201cSafe Travel Summit\u201d at the Kensington Hall of the Kensington Hotel Saipan. Others in photo are, seated from left, Governor\u2019s COVID-19 Task Force chair Warren F. Villagomez, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres, and regional epidemiologist Stephanie Kern-Allely. (JOSHUA SANTOS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Effective Nov. 19, fully vaccinated travelers with proof of a fully vaccinated household will no longer need to quarantine.<\/p>\n

Fully vaccinated travelers with a household that is not verified to be fully vaccinated will have to quarantine at a designated site for five days. Unvaccinated travelers will have to quarantine at a designated site for seven days.<\/p>\n

These are the upcoming changes to the CNMI\u2019s COVID-19 quarantine protocols that were unveiled yesterday during the \u201cCNMI Safe Travel Summit\u201d at the Kensington Hall at Kensington Hotel Saipan.<\/p>\n

The event, organized by the CNMI Office of the Governor, Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., and the Governor\u2019s COVID-19 Task Force, was attended by many of the CNMI\u2019s public and private sector stakeholders.<\/p>\n

CHCC chief executive officer Esther L. Mu\u00f1a said these new changes take into consideration the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s current quarantine guidelines, President Joe Biden\u2019s recent order that foreign arrivals to the U.S. must show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 before boarding a plane to the U.S., CHCC\u2019s current understanding of community transmission of COVID-19 in households, and CHCC\u2019s current understanding of how being vaccinated help break the chains of transmission in these households.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing our evidence of fully vaccinated home protection, we see a lot more [that] the spread is coming from household infections. …We want to be able to use what we know [in tandem with] the CDC guidelines,\u201d said Mu\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

She added that a policy like this has been in place before and that fully vaccinated travelers must submit verifiable documentation that they and their households are fully vaccinated in order to bypass quarantine. \u201cWe\u2019ve done this before, we\u2019re going to do it again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mu\u00f1a said she, CHCC, and the CNMI\u2019s other health leaders will soon be meeting with hotels regarding these protocol changes, and said that they are ready to implement these changes. She also said that there will be improvements made to contact tracing and vaccination records verification to reduce wait times.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to be talking to the hotels later on, [and] this is what the new protocols will be. It\u2019s going to take effect Nov. 19, [and] we\u2019re ready. We\u2019re going to make sure that there\u2019s quicker response from contact tracing [and] quicker response for vaccination records verification so that an individual does not have to wait,\u201d said Mu\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

She said the focus will be shifting to community-based testing and that these changes effective Nov. 19 will open up opportunities for more changes in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to focus on community-based testing [and] bringing more testing to the community, but we can\u2019t do that when everything else that we\u2019re doing really focuses only on the border when we already know that the science and guidelines are there. We want to move forward, and this will open up the opportunity for other changes in protocols. …Let\u2019s work together,\u201d said Mu\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

Mu\u00f1a also touched on current public health measures and challenges and opportunities that CHCC has seen so far in the current COVID-19 safety protocols.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Effective Nov. 19, fully vaccinated travelers with proof of a fully vaccinated household will no…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":355999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355981","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\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}