A plane flies into Lihue Airport on Kauai.
Matthew Micah Wright/Getty ImagesPlanning to fly to Hawaii for the holidays? Better make sure your negative COVID-19 results are in hand, and not just pending, before boarding your plane under a change to the state’s Safe Travels program announced Thursday, Nov. 19.
Another big change: pack a few extra face masks, too. A new statewide mandate issued Monday, Nov. 16, requires those ages 5 and up to wear masks in all indoor public settings, in private vehicles when members of other households are present, and outdoors when 6 feet distance from non-household members can’t be maintained.
There are a few exceptions, such as when eating and drinking, or for those with medical conditions. Violation is a misdemeanor with penalties of up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
The moves come as Hawaii aims to tighten coronavirus restrictions before the holiday travel season. Under the modified Safe Travels program, which begins Tuesday, Nov. 24, arriving passengers must have already received their negative results before landing, or they will be required to quarantine for 14 days or the length of their stay, whichever is shorter.
Hawaii Gov. David Ige announced the change at a press conference in Honolulu on Thursday, expressing concern over “dramatically increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the continental United States and around the world” while Hawaii currently has one of the lowest case rates in the nation.
There have been at least 44 instances of travelers to Hawaii who had participated in the pretesting program but only learned their results were positive “upon arrival or a day or two later,” Ige said. “It isn’t a large number, but it’s enough to change the policy. We have to close the gap to ensure everyone’s safety … especially as more people travel to Hawaii to celebrate the holidays.” As recently as Thursday, a visitor received confirmation of a positive COVID test after landing in Hawaii.
The testing program helped reopen Hawaii to tourism at its Oct. 15 debut. It allows travelers to bypass an otherwise mandatory two-week quarantine by taking a specific COVID-19 test from an approved partner no more than 72 hours before their scheduled landing. They must also upload the results onto the Safe Travels website, which produces a QR code passengers must show to security agents after they land.
Through Nov. 23, they are still allowed to board the plane if their results are pending, a loophole that can force visitors who later test positive to quarantine in a designated hotel at their own expense.
United Airlines passengers walk past the gate to board a flight to Hawaii on Oct. 15, 2020, at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco.
Jeff Chiu/Associated Press“We did anticipate that there would be a few COVID cases that would be introduced because of travel,” Gov. Ige acknowledged Tuesday, adding that the pre-travel testing program was just “one layer” in a “layered approach” to protecting residents and visitors. “We’re the only state doing thermal screening at the airport of arrivals and we’re working with the visitor industry, the hotels and visitor destinations to implement COVID mitigation strategy.”
The Safe Travels program has screened a total of 273,020 passengers in its first 35 days, according to Lt. Gov. Josh Green, who noted the state’s program also includes “surveillance testing,” a second test for arriving passengers meant to be taken several days after landing.
Out of 17,250 surveillance tests statewide, only 27 produced positive results, Green said at yesterday’s press conference. Follow-up tests of 616 arrivals on Oahu, for example, found three cases of COVID infection, with none among the 311 tested on Kauai and only one out of the 392 tested on Maui. Of the 15,931 tests on Hawaii Island, also known as the Big Island, 23 came back with positive results.
“By doing this work, we’ve been able to keep the COVID rates at the lowest in the country,” Green said, citing a seven-day average 88 new daily cases and a 2% positivity rate. “Right now, most of our spread is not due to travelers, it’s mostly due to us, but that’s OK because we are with one other, at work, at play and so on.”
However, at a press conference earlier on Thursday, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell criticized the surveillance testing program statistics for Oahu for being closer to 1% than the 10% of travelers the state had promised. He also noted that the vast majority of the surveillance tests came from Hawaii Island, and therefore most were administered immediately upon arrival as part of that county’s mandatory secondary testing for Safe Travels participants.
“It takes four to seven days to start shedding (virus),” Caldwell said. “That’s not surveillance, and it’s misleading.”
The Honolulu mayor urged the state to consider instituting wider follow-up testing in an appropriate time frame, especially given the startling rise in infections in most of the rest of the United States. “We relied on the promises made and took risks, and that risk now is greater because of the number of cases on the continent and the raging wildfire of COVID-19, and the positivity rate of over 10% (there) compared to ours below 3%,” Caldwell said.
In the meantime, the island of Hawaii has actually reduced its requirement of a second, rapid-results test from all Safe Travels participants to just a randomized 25% of visitors in the program. Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim said in a Nov. 6 press release that the cost of testing and a lack of sufficient space made testing all participants “unsustainable,” although “the importance of this testing is unchanged.”
Those choosing to quarantine instead of taking a COVID-19 test in advance are not subject to the county’s secondary test, but like similar untested arrivals statewide, they are not allowed to stay in short-term vacation rentals, book rental cars, go shopping, dine out or otherwise be in public places. Quarantine violators also face a fine of $5,000 and up to a year in jail.
Earlier this week, a San Francisco woman in Maui was arrested for reportedly breaking quarantine. She was charged with violating public health emergency orders and unsworn falsification to authorities after her social media posts showcased her travels around Maui.
Kauai and Maui counties offer voluntary follow-up testing programs, which have also detected a handful of COVID-19 infections in returning residents and visitors who had tested negative before their flight. The Kauai Health Department reported the most recent case on Wednesday, which involved a returning resident. Kauai’s program is free to residents and $150 for visitors, who receive a voucher for an equivalent amount from a local restaurant, retailer or activity provider.
About 6,000 to 8,000 domestic passengers have arrived in Hawaii daily since Oct. 15, according to Hawaii Tourism Authority figures. That compares with some 30,000 a day before the pandemic led to the shutdown of tourism in March. The state reopened to visitors from Japan on Nov. 6 and plans to allow visitors from Canada by mid-December.
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