HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Guam’s delegate to the U.S. Congress said the island is clearly benefitting from thousands of visiting military personnel during the pandemic.
“The bottom line is: we don’t have any visitors,” U.S. Congressman Michael San Nicolas said at a media conference Tuesday.
Exercises that include international allies have been conducted as recently as this week. Members of foreign militaries were spotted in Tumon recently, enjoying shore leave or “liberty” before a multi-naval exercise known as Malabar concluded.
Visiting personnel, including from allied nations, must be vaccinated in order to leave the bases, Joint Region Marianas, the local military command has previously confirmed.
“I’m very, very glad that they are vaccinated. That means that they aren’t going to be inundating any health care systems. It also means if they were vaccinated and they’ve been on (their) ship, and they travel over to (Guam)…if they are still asymptomatic it’s very unlikely they are carrying the disease outside of the base,” San Nicolas said.
San Nicolas encouraged everyone to get the Covid-19 vaccine during the conference, but also advocated for policies that recognize vaccinated people can still spread the disease.
He called the recent exercises “the few real opportunities” this year to help Guam’s economy.
“So all of that economic activity that’s happening — with all those vaccinated patrons, is no different than all the economic activity that we can generate from vaccinated locals and residents also going out into the community.”
Michael San Nicolas
