Hawaii's Governor, David Ige, has reportedly declined to offer a specific timeline for the reopening of outside tourism to America's 50th state but declared that he does have a plan to do so safely when the time comes.
In an interview released today with Hawaii News Now, Ige explained his reasons for refusing to set any particular dates for rebooting travel to the islands and indicated that international travelers may be the first to be welcomed back.
Ige outlined four different phases to restarting travel: Inter-island, domestic, international and creating an alternate screening and tracking process to replace a quarantine. He had already announced on June 1 that the inter-island quarantine will be lifted as of June 16, but quarantine measures for U.S. mainland and foreign visitors will remain in force beyond the end of June 2020.
In the interview, Ige spoke of welcoming back tourists from transpacific nations, such as Japan and Korea, before lifting Hawaii's restrictions on visitors from the mainland U.S. In doing so, he would be following in the footsteps of various countries worldwide that are considering, or have already implemented, so-called "travel bubbles" or "air bridges", which allow for the fast-tracking travelers inbound from areas of the globe where COVID-19 infection rates are relatively low.
"I looked at the stats yesterday the United States as a country had 15 [or] 20,000 new cases, and you look to Japan, all of Japan had 33 new cases and all of Korea had 35 new cases, so from my perspective, the travel bubbles are establishing corridors to communities with similar virus risk and similar virus activity," he said.
Ige has acted in an abundance of caution throughout the course of the pandemic and articulated to the local news outlet that he doesn't intend to issue specific dates about resuming tourism before more is revealed about the situation, since it is still evolving.
"That's the challenge. Everybody wants to just have a plan, set dates and drive through it. The reality is the triggers are going to be based on the virus activity in those communities at that point in time," the Governor said. "We err on the side of protecting the public health. That's what we do in an emergency. That's what we do for hurricanes and tsunamis."
On top of which, Hawaii's robust hotel industry will need at least a month to prepare itself for handling the influx of visitors that are sure to arrive as soon as the state's borders are opened up, especially given the host of new health safety and hygiene measures that will need to be implemented for preventing potential viral transmission.
Ige went on to say that the state is currently working with Hawaii's Congressional delegation to enhance present TSA protocols and come up with an optimal system for tracking the origin points of outside visitors.
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