THE initiative of the Bohol local government to establish a travel bubble or “Green Zone” between international destinations and Panglao Island, is being hampered by the inadequacy of vaccines for the locals.At the Bohol tourism forum on Monday, Gov. Arthur C. Yap said the Sangguniang Panlalawigan has already approved P100 million “on standby” for the purchase of vaccines for its residents, but “the fact that the vaccines are all operating under emergency use authorizations, [National Task Force against Covid-19] Secretary [Carlito] Galvez told me that we cannot buy or procure these vaccines, unless we do it hand in hand with the national government.”
He added, “We are ready to buy when the government gives us the approval to do so, but as Secretary Galvez always tells me, there is enough vaccines that will be distributed especially in the coming weeks to the coming next two months. So we must instead put our money and our time and our attention in advocating and informing people to get vaccinated, and put our money in training and implementation. ”Bohol gradually reopened to tour-ism last December amid the pandemic, with Yap even mulling over a green zone between foreign countries with controlled Covid cases and Panglao Island.
“This bold concept will not be easy considering the very challenges that the pandemic presents, includ-ing vaccine supply issues, as well as other sensitive considerations,” said lawyer Lucas M. Nunag, chairman of the Provincial Tourism Council at the same event. “For our part, the private sector is enthusiastic about the concept of setting up Panglao island as a green zone.
This concept has a reasonable chance of achieving a significant win, a success story that will inspire and provide some hope for our battered and depressed tour-ism industry in the country.
He said the province’s business community last week launched a fund-raising project so the private sector can buy vaccines, as well as help disseminate information on the importance of vaccination. Other local government units, however, like Baguio City and those in Metro Manila, purchased their own vac-cines through the national government. In the first quarter of 2021, guest arrivals in Bohol were 18,532, a. 77.33-percent plunge from the 81,755 recorded in the same period last year.
The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) is currently studying a proposal to allow vaccinated foreign tourists with negative RT-PCR tests to enter the Philippines. As this developed, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat announced that 10,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines will be arriving in Bohol as early as this week.
“I am delighted to bring the good news that Secretary Galvez and vaccine czar Secretary Vince Dizon have approved our request for additional vaccines for Bohol. With this, the industry›s frontliners can start preparing for a bigger reopening of tourism in the coming days.
”Arriving vaccines will be the Russian-made Gamaleya Sputnik V, which will be good for two doses for 5,000 tourism frontliners. Bohol, a prime tourism destination, has been reeling from the massive downturn in the sector due to Covid-19. Yap said some 200,000 workers have been gravely affected by the ensuing lockdowns and economic slump due to the pandemic.
The Bohol governor stressed that tourism workers from accredited establishments with a Certificate of Authority to Operate from the Department of Tourism and have Bohol’s seal of excellence called the Ultimate Bohol Experience (UBE), will be prioritized in the A4 list.
Yap earlier asked for 70,000 vaccine doses from the IATF for its tourism workers. Romulo Puyat added that with the inoculation of tourism workers in Bohol, she is optimistic that a travel bubble between the province and destinations in Asia will soon be feasible.
“There are no standard procedures in confronting this pandemic. We have to find innovative measures for the nation to recover. It will be a constant challenge and new hurdles will occur, but discovering and ad-dressing them is the way to adapt to this crisis. Bohol’s local procedures have always strived to keep the locals safe while remaining welcome tourism. This makes Bohol a prime candidate when we begin opening up direct travel bubbles with select regional destinations very soon,” she said.
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