Honolulu:
Despite increasing coronavirus cases across the US, Hawaii officials hope to reboot tourism next week by loosening months of economically crippling pandemic restrictions, including a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all arriving travelers.
The plan, which was postponed after the virus surged in the summer, will allow Hawaii-bound travellers who test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of their trip to sidestep two weeks of quarantine. But the October 15 launch of the pre-travel testing program is causing concern for some who say gaps in the plan could further endanger a community still reeling from summer infection rates that spiked to 10 per cent after local restrictions eased.
State Sen. Glenn Wakai, chair of the Committee on Economic Development, Tourism and Technology, said one problem is that the tests are not mandatory for all. Travellers can still choose to not get tested and quarantine for two weeks upon arrival, which means those with a negative test could get infected on the plane. “They’re going to come here with this false sense of belief that, ‘Hey, I got tested, Hawaii, I’m clean. Here’s my paperwork. Let me enjoy my Hawaiian vacation,’ not knowing that the person in seat B on a five-hour flight gave them the coronavirus,” Wakai said.
Hawaii has lived under quarantine laws for months, but hundreds — at times thousands — of people have arrived daily since the pandemic started. Some have flouted safety measures, leading to arrests and fines for the scofflaws. Before the pandemic, the state received about 30,000 visitors per day.
If the islands face another coronavirus surge because of a hasty return to tourism, another lockdown could spell economic disaster, Wakai said. He said the state has mismanaged the pandemic from the beginning. Hawaii’s state epidemiologist and its director of health both left their positions in September after concerns were raised about their handling of the virus and the state’s contact tracing efforts.
Wakai also worries that reopening tourism before children are safely back in school could challenge parents who return to work in the tourism industry. But others view the pre-travel testing plan as the best way to add a layer of protection while kickstarting the economy. Hawaii has had one the nation’s highest unemployment rates since the start of the pandemic, which ground to a halt nearly all vacation-related activity.
Hawaii Lt. Gov. Josh Green, who has spearheaded the testing program, acknowledged the risks but said the plan will give the islands a much-needed chance for economic recovery. “It’s important that people know we welcome them as long as they’ve gotten their test,” Green said, adding that wearing a mask in public is still Hawaii law.
Green, an emergency room doctor who recently recovered from COVID-19, said calls for testing at Hawaii’s airports don’t take into account capacity or cost. Even if the state could test all visitors, people wouldn’t get their results right away, he added. “If we were to test everybody that came, we would have to have 8,000 tests” per day, Green said, estimating the number of visitors he thinks will travel to Hawaii at the program’s start. The state currently has about 4,000 tests available each day for residents and visitors.
As part of the plan, Hawaii is partnering with several U.S. mainland pharmacies and airlines for testing..
