OVER 10,500 guests—both foreign and local—are currently booked in 133 hotels in Luzon, the main focus of the national government’s enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
A list of hotels and other accommodations from the Department of Tourism (DOT) as of March 25, a copy of which was obtained by the BusinessMirror, showed the largest bulk of guests were located in the National Capital Region (NCR) at 8,914. Seventy hotels have been allowed to operate in the NCR, and are still hosting 689 foreign and 6,815 domestic guests, with 1,410 persons not identified by nationality.
Of the total number of guests staying in 133 Luzon hotels, 1,019 were foreigners, 7,885 were domestic guests, while 1,619 persons had unspecified nationalities.
The ECQ, implemented on March 17, was meant to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19), a highly contagious respiratory infection that originated in Wuhan, China.
The total number of cases of Covid-19 in the country rose to 1,418 on Sunday, with 42 recoveries and 71 deaths, the Department of Health reported.
As of March 25, there were 11,009 in-house guests booked in 203 hotels all over the country, with some provinces having already imposed their respective lockdowns. Of the total guests, 1,330 were foreigners, 8,058 were locals, and 1,621 had unspecified nationalities.
The DOT said it remained committed in helping the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa) find accommodations for repatriated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
In the agency’s Administrative Order (AO) 2020-001-B or amended guidelines for accommodation establishments during the ECQ, signed by Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat:
■ OFWs and health workers shall be accommodated in single occupancy rooms. Only one person shall be accommodated in each room;
■ Other guests may be accommodated in double occupancy rooms, provided that 1) The distance between the beds should be at least 2 meters; 2) A divider is placed between the beds; 3) A bathroom schedule must be observed. Only one person shall be permitted to use the bathroom at any given time; 4) Guests shall disinfect the bathroom after every use using the provided sanitation kit; 5) No sharing of food or any personal or nonpersonal belongings; and 6) All trash, food and non-food, shall be separated;
■ Each room shall be provided with a sanitation kit which guests shall use to regularly disinfect commonly accessed surfaces and items such as door knobs, light switches, the bathroom sink, etc.;
■ Guests are confined to their rooms, mingling with occupants of other rooms shall not be allowed; and
■ Guests shall use the same bed and the same room they are billeted in throughout the entire period of their stay.
Many of the hotels now hosting a large number of domestic guests include OFWs and their families, medical frontliners, and business-process outsourcing employees.
Romulo Puyat also praised the family of the late Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua for allowing the use of their hotels for medical frontliners. “I’m so happy they offered their hotels for free for our frontliners,” she told this paper. The Cabangons own, among others, the Citystate hotels now housing workers from the Philippine General Hospital.
The BusinessMirror is under the ALC Group of Companies, which owns the hotel interests.
The DOT chief is currently under self-quarantine, having been exposed to Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief Felimon Santos Jr. who had tested positive for Covid-19. “I will be undergoing self-quarantine as I was exposed to him in a meeting last March 20,” Romulo Puyat said in a news statement.
“Since I do not show any signs nor symptoms, I will not be having myself tested in order to save the limited supply of testing kits to people who truly need it. By staying at home, I will not put anyone I come in contact with at risk. The safety of those around me is my priority,” she added.
She stressed that she will continue to do her job while at home. As of March 26, the DOT has assisted 11,863 stranded travelers all over the country.