A meeting with the Municipal Health Officer of San Remigio was conducted on November 13, 2020 in the rural health unit 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 MHO Dr. Orleta B. Ursal while the VPHCS team included Dr. Erlinda Posadas, Petty Orbeta de Castro, 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.
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. The filling up of the tool by the passengers was done since the lockdown started in March 2020 until the first week of October.
There were two copies of the tool filled up by a passenger. One copy went to the Bantayan government where the passenger is going to, and the other copy goes to the records of the Hagnaya Port. It is only if a passenger has symptoms reported in the tool that the RHU staff in the port would tell the passenger to go back to his origin.
Nobody can leave the port for Bantayan without filling up the tool.
However, in October 2020, due to an executive order of Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, the filling up of the health declaration tool was stopped and travel restrictions were lifted. This was intended to revive tourism in Bantayan.
There is a health declaration tool in hotels and resorts in Bantayan, that guests have to fill up.
