Public Health officials are responding to an unidentified infectious borne disease, or an illness caused by a pathogen, in a simulated health crisis at the Westin Resort Guam. 

It’s all part of the “Fire on the Horizon: Pacific Health Security Exercise,” the first full-scale exercise for the Pacific region. 

DPHSS Territorial Epidemiologist Patrick Sotto is the co-lead coordinator. 

He explained the training’s objectives, saying, “The first is to test the department’s capacity and capabilities to respond to an emerging infectious disease pathogen.” 

“The second objective is to– and this is where it’s the first ever exercise of its scale– is to test the regional capacity for the other islands surrounding us,” added Sotto. 

On Tuesday, a conference room at the Westin filled with local and regional teams, to include representatives from Fiji, Cook Islands, Vanuatu and Kiribati.

“They represent the Pacific Public Health Surveillance Network, a volunteer network of 22 pacific island country territories that we all gather and discuss surveillance strategies and response priorities,” said Sotto. 

A scenario is set up for these public health professionals to coordinate a response to, starting with early detection.

“Unfortunately, I can’t reveal the pathogen, but I will say that it requires the deployment of our environmental health team to be able to go out into the field to (deploy) environmental control measures,” added Sotto. 

Chief Public Health Officer Catherine Angcao is one of the participants.

“If we have a crisis, it will activate DECC – the Departmental Emergency Coordination Center. I will be the incident commander and I will create a team that will respond to the emergency. And not only within the department, we will also engage other departments outside of Public Health,” said Angcao. 

They’ll have to identify the pathogen by Thursday and prepare for a mock press conference by Friday to brush up their skills in risk communications. 

The simulated exercise will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. this week, with activities happening at several public health sites across the island. 

Meantime, officials assure the training will not disrupt regular services. 

“We’re still going to provide services to the public. This is just an additional (exercise) testing our capacity and capability to respond to such an emergency,” added Angcao.