The Guam Homeland Security/Office of Civil Defense's new contracts with Wyndham Garden Guam and Santa Fe Hotel for quarantine service cost $200,000 combined and will be paid with local funds.
Both hotels are being used as holding facilities for arriving passengers who are required to be placed in quarantine for 14 days as part of the measures to contain the spread of Covid-19.
The government is renting 98 rooms at Santa Fe Hotel at $99 a day, including meals and laundry service; and 144 rooms at Wyndham for $110 a day. Contracts with both hotels expire on Aug. 16 or on exhaustion of fund.
The government announced earlier that all individuals quarantined at the Pacific Star Resort & Spa were to be transferred to Santa Fe and Wyndham.
GHS/OCD has made the contracts publicly available in response to the community's demand for transparency.
Prior to the new contracts, the administration was confronted with the question as to how the hotels were selected. The hotel-turned-quarantine facilities were used to house travelers and sailors from USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said the first set of contracts with hotels that have been used as quarantine facilities was acquired by virtue of her public health emergency declaration which she said gave her emergency procurement power.
"The authority is that I can institute emergency powers to purchase these facilities. I had to explain in numerous occasions why I did that. It’s all for containing the virus, saving lives, and it’s unfortunate that from this virus, we’ve had five fatalities,” she said a Monday's press conference.