The summer capital of the Philippines has temporarily suspended the approval of leisure travel requests of incoming tourists due to the threat of Omicron variant and the increasing COVID-19 cases.
However, Baguio tourism officer Engineer Aloysius “Alec” Mapalo crarified that the city is not on lockdown and it did not stop the entry of tourists.
“For now, we are not only allowing to add more to the current pre-approved travels that already exceeded 5k daily until Jan 8. We’ll set new limits at reduced capacity and will announced such when finalized,” Mapalo said in his post.
The Baguio Tourism Office said in their advisory that leisure travel requests into the city under the Baguio VISITA platform were temporarily suspended starting Sunday, January 2, 2022.
Further, all pre-approved travels with issued QR-coded tourist passes will still be allowed entry on their declared travel dates but they will be subjected to the mandatory triage.
The tourism office added in their advisory that the policy might change in the future but with prior announcement.
The city government will the entry of authorized persons outside of residence (APORs) and essential travels provided that they must register first at the hdf.baguio.gov.ph portal and be subjected to documentary requirements and triage health screening.
At present, based on the monitoring of Department of Health Cordillera, the city has now 73 active COVID-19 cases after the detection of nine new case yesterday.