HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Cooking, playing Word Blitz on her iPhone, and unplugging from the news.
These are part of Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero’s personal wellness regimen amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The governor, 70, also enjoys walking and does Pilates.
Lou Leon Guerrero
“I do cook dinner and that makes me feel more relaxed. I turn off the TV, I don’t listen to the radio – it’s just me and the food that I’m cooking,” the governor said when asked about her personal wellness strategy during Wednesday’s Guam Chamber of Commerce general membership meeting.
The cooking part doesn’t happen everyday, the governor said.
“But that is one of the ways that I try to wind down,” she said.
When she can, she also catches up on her favorite TV shows.
“I zone out. It’s really what I do. And I’ve discovered playing games on my iPhone; like I play Word Blitz,” the governor said.
She also plays solitaire on her phone, she added, noting that she doesn’t play these games during government work time.
The governor, a registered nurse, is on track when it comes to coping with the pandemic, mentally and physically.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said taking breaks from watching, reading or listening to news stories, exercising regularly, eating healthy, and doing activities you enjoy are healthy ways to cope with stress brought on by the pandemic.
“Learning to cope with stress in a healthy way will make you, the people you care about, and those around you become more resilient,” the CDC said.
Leon Guerrero, a former Bank of Guam president and a former senator, said Covid-19 will perhaps be “the greatest challenge of our lifetimes.”
“But the strength of our island has been a light through this darkness,” she said.
Her declaration of a public health state of emergency on Guam, starting in March, remains in place.
Covid-19 has claimed 129 lives and infected more than 7,500 others. The governor herself, along with Lt. Gov. Josh Tenorio, tested positive for Covid-19 in August 2020. The pandemic forced unemployment and underemployment for some 27,000.
In her remarks before the Guam Chamber of Commerce, the governor outlined her administration’s response to the pandemic and her plans for economic recovery.
“We fought because lives depended on it. We had no other option but to believe in our collective capacity to win this war and to build back better,” she told Chamber members and guests.
For several months since the state of emergency declaration in March, the governor held regular press conferences to update the public about what’s being done to fight off the virus and its impact.
But the regular press conferences stopped.
“Although I myself have not held as many press conferences, but the information is getting out there through channels, from people who are much more knowledgeable about the information,” she said.
Among them, she said, are Labor Director David Dell’Isola, Revenue and Taxation Director Dafne Mansapit-Shimizu, Administration Director Ed Birn, and Dr. Felix Cabrera of the governor’s Physicians Advisory Group.
“(Public Health Director) Art San Agustin is also a frequent flyer in the media environment,” she said.
