HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Guam is still a “very high” risk travel destination on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list because of Covid-19, but Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero’s office is expecting at least a notch down in its classification.
A CDC travel health notice ranking of “very high” or level 4 automatically warns travelers to “avoid all travel to Guam.”
Level 4 means the new cases over the past 28 days is more than 100.
“Guam has met the CDC criteria for level 3, and is expected in the next CDC travel update,” Krystal Paco-San Agustin, the governor’s director of communications, said on Thursday.
A level 3 or “high” risk destination means travelers should avoid all nonessential travel to Guam.
There is no telling when that next update will be made, officials said.
“We had 92 local cases in the last 28 days,” Paco-San Agustin said.
For a population of 200,000 or less such as Guam, “level 3 high” means there are 51 to 100 new cases over 28 days.
A “level 2 moderate” means 10 to 50 cases over 28 days, and a “level 1 low” is less than 10 cases over the past 28 days.
Paco-San Agustin said the Department of Public Health and Social Services has been in communication with CDC on the issue.
The last time the governor wrote a letter to CDC to clarify the “very high” risk rating was in August.
Paco-San Agustin said Public Health has already asked CDC staff to follow up.
“If it isn’t updated as described by CDC, Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero will certainly intervene for the best interests of Guam,” she said.
The governor earlier said she’s comfortable reopening Guam’s tourism by May 1, after moving the date a few times since last year.
But senators this week said while the Guam Visitors Bureau is working on encouraging tourists to visit the island, Guam also needs to convince CDC that it is now safer travel destination compared to what it was in 2020.
The governor shifted Guam from Pandemic Condition of Readiness 2 to PCOR 3 recently. Guam’s latest Covid-19 area risk score is 0.1.
Besides fewer new infections, hospitalizations and deaths for weeks now, Guam also is now among the leading areas on American soil in terms of vaccinating its population against Covid-19.
Lou Leon Guerrero
