Hawaii’s pre-travel COVID-19 check plan continues to be “beneath building” as Hawaii instances enhance

Gov. Ige held press conferences on July 6 and seven. (You’ll be able to view the July sixth convention here and July seventh here in case you have greater than a few hours to kill. 😉 ) Between the 2 press conferences, the governor has indicated that the pre-travel testing program continues to be “beneath building.”

Yesterday, July 7, 2020, Hawaii had their largest single-day, COVID-19 instances reported – 41. The earlier excessive was 34 instances again on April 3, 2020. By means of yesterday, 1071 instances have been recognized with the overwhelming majority of these being on Oahu.

Hawaii has reopened a lot of its native economic system and as such have been anticipating the rise in instances. Although they’re involved with the elevated instances, they’re higher ready to conduct contact tracing to check and isolate people who would possibly presumably unfold the virus.

Moreover, the rise in instances has not translated right into a pressure on the state’s well being care system. Only a few COVID-positive sufferers are requiring intensive care in Hawaii. As Lt. Gov. Inexperienced reported on the July 6 press convention, Hawaii at the moment has 244 ICU beds of which, solely 49% are in use. Solely three of these beds are being occupied with COVID-19 sufferers. Hawaii has 459 ventilators of which 53 are at the moment in use and solely two of these are for sufferers with COVID-19. Clearly a surge in instances will not be fascinating, however Hawaii has capability to reply to a surge, if obligatory.

Between the 2 press conferences in latest days, a number of members of the press requested the governor if he would possibly delay the August 1st begin of opening journey to Hawaii with out quarantine with a detrimental pre-travel check. These questions have been raised in gentle of the truth that the variety of instances on the U.S. mainland have been growing. On the July sixth press convention, the governor mentioned,

“We’re monitoring what occurs and clearly if we do see situations that we do really feel that may put the well being and security of our neighborhood at jeopardy, we are going to think about extending that August 1st date, however at this time limit, with greater than three weeks previous to that date, we’re dedicated to creating positive that every one the issues that we have to put in place as a way to safely welcome again trans-Pacific vacationers who get examined, we do imagine that we have now the techniques to have the ability to try this safely.”

So, that’s the place all the pieces stands in the meanwhile. We’ll proceed to maintain looking out for and report information because it pertains to reopening Hawaii journey.