COVID-19 mass testing to drive CNMI’s reopening to tourists

The road to the CNMI’s community-focused economic recovery will largely be based on COVID-19 mass testing, according to the testimony of an economic recovery team from the Office of the Governor that spoke in yesterday’s committee hearing at the House of Representatives.

Matt Deleon Guerrero, who is a member of the Governor’s Economic Recovery Team, said that, as more testing happen, the community would move through the different phases of recovery, including the targeted reopening of the CNMI to tourists on July 15.

Speaking at a House committees on Commerce and Tourism session, Guerrero stressed that this testing-based recovery approach is central to the phases through which the CNMI community will progress, right up to the projected reopening of tourism.

In opening up the economy, significant mitigation measures must be put in place by businesses throughout the CNMI. However, currently, the task force is bent on getting the domestic economy up and running safely first, and as quickly as possible.

Northern Marianas Business Alliance president Alex Sablan, who is also part of the Economic Recovery Team, acknowledged that while the economy has remained open except for some restrictions, employees, out of fear, do not want to go to work.

“The greater economy has been open, but we can’t get our employees to go to work because they’re very fearful of contracting this disease. That’s a mindset issue that we have to contend with. We have to deal with,” he said.

The task force appealed to the House committees to help with a resolution that will assist businesses in the CNMI to put up these COVID-19 mitigation measures, not just for the tourists but also to ensure that the workers and the rest of the community remain safe.

Testing is important

Sablan highlighted that the COVID-19 testing, while not the “silver bullet” to all the problems brought by the pandemic, could at least help contain the concern.

“It’s not going to resolve all of the problems, but if we can get the vast majority of our citizens tested and know who has and who doesn’t have COVID-19 at this point in time…the relative community, we think, will be filtered to a point where we have a factor known, that it is relatively contained,” he added.

Thereafter, Sablan added, the CNMI may be marketed again to tourists.

Key elements to making sure that the CNMI population will remain safe through all these lies with the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. and the COVID-19 Task Force, having capabilities to do testing, contact tracing, and monitoring.

According to CHCC chief executive officer Esther Muna, in order to reopen, health care capacity in the CNMI must be looked into.

“What would require for a reopening? You look at the health care capacity. We have the [Alternate Care Site] set up. We have the resources, we have the staffing support from the [U.S.] Department of Defense…,” she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also on the ground to help with contact tracing, to assist CHCC in containing the COVID-19 cases on island.

“[We] also [have] to look at the situation of making sure the hospital has the ventilator it needs, the beds that are needed. These are all things that we need to take into account in trying to say that, yes, it’s safe. But again, the guidelines, and the necessary mitigation needs to be in place,” Muna added.

CHCC is working with the COVID-19 Task Force, as well as the Governor’s Economic Recovery Team, to ensure that consistent monitoring and checking of businesses are in place, to ensure the safety of all employees and customers, as restrictions start to get lifted.

A different kind of tourism

When the CNMI reopens it will be a different kind of tourism. Currently, the intent of the Economic Recovery team is to work with CHCC and do testing as incremental as possible and tie it to action that can be done by members of the community.

“They are a part of the solution in lifting the restrictions. …We progress as more and more testing happen, and as greater and greater levels of tests are negative, we progress…,” Guerrero said.

According to him, the experience in all economic environments is of a diminished demand across the board because of fear, inability to travel, and concerns over health. “So when we say resumption of tourism, it isn’t full board exactly the way it was. It’s going to be a dramatically different environment…”

“We’re talking about our resumption of tourism, I don’t think people in the industry are necessarily envisioning a tourism industry that looks like what happened prior to COVID-19. It is going to be substantially different, that whole environment of the economy will be substantially different,” he added.