Hawaii governor discourages travel to the state
Hawaii Gov. David Ige on Monday urged tourists from around the world not to visit the islands until at least the end of October, as the state grapples with an influx of coronavirus cases from residents and vacationers who brought the virus with them.
Although the governor's announcement does not ban travelers from flying to Hawaii, Ige (de) said in a news conference that he is working with airlines, hotels and other tourism-related businesses to "stop tourism in the state". Do what they can". People traveling for essential business. Restaurant capacity has been restricted, and access to rental cars is limited.
The governor urged travelers to curb air travel while the state's hospitals are at capacity as a result of the highly permeable delta version. Although about 55 percent of the state's eligible population is fully vaccinated—a rate higher than the national average—the Delta variant in Hawaii, as elsewhere, has led to increased hospitalizations.
"Now is not the time to visit the islands," Ige said at a news conference on Monday. "Right now is a risky time to travel." "I think it's important that we reduce the number of visitors here on the islands," he told the Honolulu Star-advertiser.
However, the state is not tightening its entry requirements again.
Hawaii previously required all travelers to present a negative coronavirus test to bypass the state's strict quarantine, but last month that requirement ended for vaccinated travelers. And because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that home travel is safe for vaccinated people, Ige told reporters it would be difficult to reinstate the negative-test requirement for vaccinated travelers in Hawaii.
For unaffiliated travelers, the state still requires a negative test result or 10-day quarantine.
As coronavirus vaccines become more widely available and pandemic restrictions are eased or abandoned, people have returned to travel, and more people are going to Hawaii. According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, more than 791,000 people arrived on the Hawaiian Islands in June, the most recent month in which data is available. The number of June passengers, who mostly came from the east and west coasts of the United States, increased from May, with more than 629,000 visitors traveling by plane.
Hundreds of out-of-state health care workers are being sent to help overwhelmed hospitals during the fourth wave of the pandemic. Hawaii will receive $46 million in federal funding for more than 500 traveling health care workers sent to hospitals across the state. Queens Health Systems - which declared an "internal state of emergency" on Friday after a spike in COVID-19 patients forced the island of Oahu to set up a 25-bed tent outside West Oahu Hospital - 81 Out of State Health Welcomed the star-caring staff at its hospitals on Monday, the advertiser reported.
"Our nurses are exhausted, and we don't have enough to manage the number of patients coming to all the islands," Jill Hoggard Green, president and chief executive of Queens Health Systems, told the newspaper. “We have a large number of COVID patients coming in who need high-level respiratory support, mechanical support to breathe, be it ventilators or high rates of oxygen.”
Ige indicated that the state could close if Hawaii's hospital boom continues.
"If the number of cases continues to rise rapidly, as has been the case in the last 10 weeks...
Hawaii reported 893 new coronavirus cases on Monday, bringing its seven-day average of new infections to 700, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. More than 400 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 in the state, including 79 in intensive care units.
John D. Fries, president and chief executive of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, Ige, the state agency for the promotion of tourism, said in a statement that the agency is "strongly advising visitors that now is not the right time to visit." Hawaiian Airlines spokesman Alex da Silva said in a statement that the airline "is fully aware of the strain on our health care system imposed by the new COVID-19 cases." Da Silva touted the state's safe travel program, which "requires vaccination or testing for travelers to avoid quarantine and has been effective in managing the number of travel-related cases."
"We believe that the single most valuable way to address this crisis is increasing vaccination rates in our community, which is why we have announced the need to vaccinate our employees," da Silva said.
The governor's petition came soon after a mandate was announced earlier this month forcing state and county employees to show proof of vaccination or take weekly tests.
According to the Associated Press, the mandate has faced pushback from dozens of masked vaccine opponents who have gathered outside the Honolulu condominium building, where Lieutenant Governor Josh Greene (D) lives with his wife and two children aged 14 and 10. live with children. Some shouted at bullhorns and flashed strobe lights in the building, while others have posted flyers with the words "Jew" and "fraud" around his face.
Green, who is Jewish, told MSNBC's Joy Reid on Monday that he is taking up his second job as an emergency room doctor, where he is treating Covid-19 patients. The lieutenant governor mentioned that he had not vaccinated all the covid-19 patients he saw in the ER.
"They usually shed a lot of tears because they realize they could have stopped it," he said. "They're all to themselves because they know they can die now because they could have done one simple thing, which was to get vaccinated."
Green said unvaccinated patients in the ER recently demanded that he give them ivermectin to treat the coronavirus. Commonly used to treat parasites in animals, ivermectin has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat several types of parasitic worms found in people. But the FDA and health officials have warned for months against using the drug to treat the coronavirus, saying its use "could cause serious harm." The Mississippi State Department of Health recently issued an alert advising people not to take the drug, saying that "at least 70 percent of recent calls" to the state's poison control center were due to COVID-19. It has been reported from people taking ivermectin for treatment or prevention.
Amid a surge in cases in the state, the lieutenant governor said he feels for those in Hawaii's hospitals who have yelled at him "for not prescribing ivermectin or other treatments that don't work."