HONOLULU — Hawaii is delaying the start of its pre-travel testing program to Sept. 1.
Gov. David Ige made the announcement yesterday after meeting with the four county mayors and officials from the Department of Health (DOH). The original start date was Aug. 1.
With the new date, all travellers entering Hawai‘i will be subject to the mandatory 14-day quarantine until Sept. 1. Taking a COVID-19 test will not allow anyone who is travelling from out-of-state to bypass the quarantine.
“We want to welcome back our visitors once our state is ready to do so in a safe manner that will hopefully avoid the need to backtrack in the future,” said Chris Tatum, President and CEO of the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority (HTA). “Once we receive details on the process and requirements from the Department of Transportation and the DOH, we will share that information with the visitor industry.”
Gov. Ige added: “We have always said that we will make decisions based on the health and safety of our community as the highest priority. This decision came through much much discussion and we have assessed the situation that we see before us and over the past few weeks. I’ve already mentioned that we’ve set a new record in the number of cases – 42. And just a reminder a few days before that we had set the previous record of 41 cases.”
Gov. Ige noted that on the U.S. mainland, “we continue to see uncontrolled outbreaks and surges. This includes the highest number of daily cases in California, Texas, Arizona and Florida, and increasing cases in Nevada. As we speak right now, the outbreaks on the mainland are not in control and we don’t believe that that situation would change significantly by Aug.1 as we had hoped.”
Gov. Ige’s press conference can be viewed at HTA’s Facebook page at
