Hawaii governor discourages tourist from visiting
Hawaii Gov. David Ige on Monday pleaded with tourists from around the world not to visit the islands through at least the end of October, as the state grapples with an influx of coronavirus cases from residents and vacationers who’ve brought the virus with them.
While the governor’s announcement does not prohibit travelers from visiting Hawaii, Ige, a Democrat, said at a news conference that he is working with airlines, hotels and other tourism businesses to “do what they could” to curb tourism to the state except for those people traveling for essential business. Restaurant capacity has been restricted and access to rental cars is limited.
The governor urged travelers to curb their travel to Hawaii while the state’s hospitals are at capacity due to the highly transmissible delta variant. While nearly 55 percent of the state’s eligible population is fully vaccinated — a rate higher than the national average — the delta variant in Hawaii, as it has elsewhere, has pushed up hospitalizations.
“It’s not a good time to travel to the islands,’’ he said at a news conference Monday. “It’s a risky time to be traveling right now.” Ige told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser,
“I think it’s important that we reduce the number of visitors coming here to the islands.”
The state, however, is not retightening its entry requirements. Hawaii previously allowed for travelers to present a negative coronavirus test to bypass the state’s strict quarantine, and that requirement went away altogether for vaccinated travelers last month. But since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said domestic travel is safe for vaccinated people, Ige told reporters that reinstituting the safety standard for those coming into Hawaii would be difficult.
As the coronavirus vaccines became more widely available and pandemic restrictions were loosened or abandoned, people have returned to traveling, and more are heading to Hawaii. More than 791,000 people arrived by plane to the Hawaiian islands in June, the most recent month in which data is available, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. The June travelers, composed of mostly those coming from the East and West Coasts of the U.S., was an increase from May, which saw more than 629,000 visitors by plane.
The announcement comes as hundreds of out-of-state health-care workers are being flown in to help overwhelmed hospitals during the fourth wave of the pandemic. The state will receive $46 million in federal funding for more than 500 traveling health care workers to be dispatched at hospitals across Hawaii. The Queen’s Health Systems — which declared an “internal state of emergency” Friday after a spike in COVID19 patients forced the city of Oahu to set up a 25-bed tent outside a West Oahu hospital — welcomed 81 out-of-state health care workers to its hospitals Monday, reported the Star-Advertiser.
Ige indicated that a lockdown of the state was a possibility if the surge continued to hammer Hawaii’s hospitals.