Guam will go back into Pandemic Condition or Readiness, PCOR 1, at 12:01 a.m., Sunday for the next two weeks. The governor initially said the change would take effect after midnight tonight, however, more time was given to allow people to prepare.  

From home isolation, Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero made the announcement during today's briefing.  The aggressive step comes after 90 cases were reported this week and 121 total for just half the month. The governor, her son, CEO of Bank of Guam Joaquin Cook, and Lt. Gov. Josh Tenorio are among the cases. The governor also said she's been told there could be some 47 more cases reported today.  

 PCOR 1 means: 

-All non-essential businesses are not allowed to operate
-All public gatherings prohibited
-All public and private schools closed to “face to face” learning
-All public parks and beaches closed (except for individual use like exercise)

The governor attributed her decision, made with her physician's advisory group, with the surge in cases as well as the hospitalization rate. Last month, the averaged between one to two hospitalizations a day and today, the governor said there were eight cases at the Guam Memorial Hospital with one under ICU care and one patient on a ventilator. 

 
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"Right now we are not recovering, we are responding," she said. "We are responding now to a crisis that's even worse than when we started this pandemic. To have a comprehensive and complete restrictions again is what is necessary to stem and curtail and cut off these exposures to our people. So I feel that not doing all these restrictions is going to be a piecemeal slow process of response. We need to...battle this virus seriously, intensely and aggressively." 

The governor also said many of the recent cases are the result of residents not wearing masks and social distancing during social gatherings -- instances she saw herself. 

"These positive cases were traced back to funeral homes and they were traced back to bars and they were traced back to restaurants," she said. "This is serious business and I want to make that message and impress that on our people. The other thing that I'm looking at, of course, decreasing the number of positive cases. I would like to have zero positive cases, but that's not going to happen. But I would like to hope and see is go back to what we were doing before August and July, which was one to two per day, some days it's zero. And our positivity rate was 1.2 or 1.3. Right now it's 2.9, that's a double increase in our positivity rate."

The governor reminds residents to avoid social gatherings and wear masks even if they are with family members. 

"I really believe with the cooperation, this commitment with the support of all our members with the community, we could rally up together with a united front to fight this virus and contain it so we can move to a much better normal life, as normal as whatever that definition is now," she said. "I just wanted to make sure please we continue on with all those measures that we have been putting forward."