State says 50% of contact tracing productive

HILO (AP) — Hawaii contact tracers have received productive responses from about 50 percent of travelers, despite spending of more than $150 million for screening and contact tracing, officials said.

A House Select Committee on COVID-19 heard testimony Monday that in calls to ensure traveler quarantine compliance, contact tracers have only meaningfully engaged about 50 percent of the time, The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported Tuesday.

Mark Mugiishi, CEO of Hawaii Medical Service Association, said travelers can be reluctant to respond because of various factors including mistaking contact tracing calls for scams and unwillingness to provide personal information.

The contact tracing program has been less effective than possible, but the information received from the 50 percent who engaged with tracers indicates the program is useful, Mugiishi said.

The state and airlines are expected to launch a pre-travel testing program for visitors Oct. 15.

Travelers who present a negative COVID-19 test taken 72 hours before arriving in Hawaii will be allowed to skip a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Ray Vara, CEO of Hawaii Pacific Health, said the testing program will likely catch about 80 percent of asymptomatic COVID-positive travelers.

Democratic Lieutenant Gov. Josh Green said Monday that about one in 300 travelers are asymptomatic and pre-travel tests are expected to catch “a ton” of those cases.

“Not every one of them, but a lot of them,” Green said. “We will bring that number that’s already low down even way lower, probably to under one in 1,000 people.”

If 7,000 people arrive in Hawaii daily, seven may be asymptomatic carriers, Green said.

Vara and Green said the state will not implement a second, post-arrival test, with Green citing an estimated cost of $800,000 per day to test 7,000 people.

“We have to ask ourselves, what’s the best approach,” Green said. “And the best approach is to do good contact tracing, good testing when people are symptomatic, and be ready in case anyone gets sick.”