CNMI moves past July 15 target reopening date

July 15 has come and gone, and the Commonwealth remains closed to tourists.

One of the reasons, according to COVID-19 Task Force chair Warren Villagomez? The spike of cases in the U.S. mainland, its surrounding region, as well as the CNMI’s neighboring island, Guam.

In May, as part of the economic recovery plan for the island, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres set July 15 as the projected date to reopen the Commonwealth to tourists. However, two months later, COVID-19 continues to heavily affect other areas, necessitating quarantine measures for travelers.

“What we’re doing is evolving,” Villagomez said. “We continue to add effort to what we’re doing, if need be. …There’s a lot of issues that we’re still evaluating, we continue to test upon arrival, we’re still getting positives. So things are still evolving.”

Speaking at the radio broadcast of the administration’s regular news briefing last Friday, Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios reiterated that the opening of the Commonwealth is a moving target. “Our community is very small and very vulnerable. …The most important thing that we need to keep in mind is the safety of our community. We’ve seen many jurisdictions that thought they were already safe and opened up, and boom, they’re right back where they started.”

“July 15 has come and gone, and we’re not going to hold ourselves to that because I don’t think the governor or anybody in the Commonwealth wants to regret,” added Palacios. “If we were not as careful, and make decisions that open up and increase our vulnerability…of our people, that’s [going to] be regrettable.”

The task force, with the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., has been meeting with agencies and organizations, including the business community, to continue to put together a plan to keep the community safe, while trying to bring in a “little bit of normalcy” to the people.

“We’re deliberately looking at every aspect that needs to be looked at, and the primary driving force is to do things, and at the same time, keep our community safe,” Palacios said.

Building local economy

As the CNMI remains unsure when tourism will be revived, shoring up the local economy is at the forefront of plans.

Press secretary Kevin Bautista pointed out that there hasn’t been really any full restriction when it comes to local businesses, particularly with the CNMI now at Level Blue under the community vulnerability scale—one step from the safest level, which is Green.

“That’s not necessarily predicated on whether or not we open up tourism,” he added.

Under Level Blue, building occupancy restrictions are increased to up to 75% of original capacity; partial restaurant and bar services are permitted to allow restaurants to serve dine-in customers, at 50% of their original occupancy limit, and in accordance with Bureau of Environmental Health guidelines; businesses open to the public can operate from 5am to 11pm, all under strict adherence to social distancing and sanitation protocols.

A meeting with the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors also took place last week where they discussed how to add to the current activities being generated domestically, regardless if there are tourists or not.

For now, while the CNMI has no specific target date for when it will reopen tourism, one of the things that the government is looking at is having mechanisms in place, through CHCC, that identifies hot zones and cold zones on island.

“… so that we can create travel bubbles or travel corridors, to specific countries, specifically a travel bubble with South Korea, so that we can generate economic activity as soon as possible,” he added.

Bautista also said that the CNMI is “in a better spot to reopen tourism much more so than Guam, which is now considered a hotspot by many within our region.”