Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat recognized how Baguio City has admirably risen to the challenges and effectively responded to the crisis caused by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, turning it into a model city for containment and one of several tourist destinations that is preparing to enter into tourism corridor arrangements with interested partner local governments in similarly low or zero risk areas.
Speaking during the 111th Charter Day anniversary program held at the newly refurbished Baguio Convention Center Tuesday, she underscored that the Summer Capital of the Philippines is heavily dependent on tourism and without any visitors, boating across Burnham Lake or go horseback riding at Wright Park will not be feasible, thus, tourism-related businesses will continue to struggle.
Secretary Puyat claimed that Baguio City was one of the first local governments to respond to the COVID-19 crisis when, as early as January 2020, Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong suspended the 2020 edition of the Panagbenga, the city’s major crowd-drawing event that was supposed to celebrate its milestone last February.
“Swift action and immediate compliance to lockdown measures averted what could have been a dire situation with the rest of the Cordillera Administrative Region, Baguio City is now under modified general community quarantine,” Secretary Puyat stressed.
The DOT official claimed that the low number of confirmed COVID-19 cases can also be attributed to the thorough process of testing, tracing, and isolating the probable and suspected cases that continues to be strictly implemented even with the downgrading of the city’s community quarantine status.
According to her, Baguio has the highest testing rate per total population for any local government in the country and just as notably, the city has the highest ratio of contacts being traced for every COVID-19 case with up to 37 persons traced per patient.
She asserted that the 1:37 ratio target is what also needs to be met in other urban areas and hot spots in the different parts of the country.
Puyat also noted that the World Health Organization (WHO) has also commended Baguio for its contact tracing strategy, stating that the city is far ahead in the contact tracing because city officials are closely working together with health officials, thus, the same must be replicated in other local governments around the country.
She emphasized that Baguio City also implemented strict health and safety protocols, such as using cashless payment methods at the public market and other establishments, regular disinfection of public places, issuing an ordinance imposing physical distancing, mandating all employees to wear face shields while on duty, even the use of robots in medicine delivery, among others, had greatly contributed in the initial success of the city against the spread of the virus.
On the part of the tourism department, Secretary Puyat said the agency had conducted thorough inspections of tourism establishments before issuing a certificate of authority to operate, aside from rolling out Safe Pass and Et-In-Express digital solutions designed for hotels and restaurants to transition to contactless transactions and enable capacity management. By Dexter A. See