A meeting with the staff of the port personnel in Hagnaya Port in San Remigio was held on November 12, 2020 in the port office in order to discuss about the development of a health declaration tool and data base for sea passengers in Hagnaya Port.
The meeting was attended by the following port personnel staff, namely: Noel Tabotabo, port administrator and Rosalyn Asingua, treasury collector. The VPHCS team included Dr. Erlinda Posadas, Edgar Gahisan and Crescenciana Labitad.
Dr. Posadas presented the agenda, introducing briefly about the project and that one of its activities is to develop a health declaration tool and database for sea passengers. She inquired about the present protocols and situation existing in the port.
Hagnaya Port is the gateway to Bantayan Island. Since the lockdown started in March 2020, there were travel restrictions. There were no passengers but only cargo vessels. In the succeeding months, locally stranded individuals (LSIs) were allowed to travel to Bantayan as long as they had the necessary documents which included a travel pass from the Philippine National Police (PNP), a medical certificate that the passenger is not a person under investigation (PUI) nor person under monitoring (PUM), barangay clearance to travel from San Remigio, and a barangay consent from Bantayan.
Passengers had to log in a logbook, with the name, origin, destination, contact number before they were to depart to Bantayan. They also filled up the Municipal Declaration Tool which originated from the Department of Health. A Rural Health Unit staff was assigned in the port to see if passengers had symptoms, and if they had, they were asked to go back home.
Passengers arriving from Bantayan were also requested to log in another logbook, with the name, destination, origin, contact number.
Temperatures were checked with arriving passengers and departing passengers. There was no health declaration tool filled up with arriving passengers.
However, the filling up of the health declaration tool for departing passengers was stopped in the first week of October when Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia signed an executive order that opened Bantayan to tourism. Signing in the two logbooks were stopped in the first week of November.
Passengers going to Bantayan would just present their booking papers of the hotels. There were no travel restrictions anymore in traveling to Bantayan from Hagnaya and to Hagnaya from Bantayan. This is so until the present time.
