Don’t reopen state to westbound visitors August 1

Gov. David Ige is expected to videoconference again with the state’s four mayors today, and a key topic in the discussion, according to sources familiar with the situation, is whether Hawai‘i can safely reopen to tourism on August 1 as previously announced.

From most indications of the status of the COVID-19 epidemic, it appears there is a very short answer:

N-o. NO!

The latest evidence suggests that Hawai‘i must postpone the tourism reopening date and that, if Ige is reluctant to take that step, Kaua‘i should consider a strategy in which the island goes it alone with stronger restrictions. County-government sources have indicated within the last 48 hours that Mayor Derek Kawakami is considering just such a step.

Delay would cost Kaua‘i residents dearly. Any semblance of recovery in the island’s tourist economy will be further delayed. Families that are struggling will continue to. Without further federal-government intervention, unemployment benefits will shrink drastically and the one-time $1,200 federal stimulus payments will likely not be repeated.

But in a webinar sponsored by the Kaua‘i Chamber of Commerce Tuesday morning, Sue Kanoho, executive director of the Kaua‘i Visitors Bureau, put succinctly the potential price Kaua‘i could pay for tourists arriving too early.

Said Kanoho: “If we open up and it goes the wrong way, it will hurt us. It wouldn’t take much. I know everyone is concerned about the August 1 date. We are too.” Premature reopening followed by large numbers of tourist-driven new infections would be an economic catastrophe for the island beyond anything we have seen so far.

There are two major considerations. First, Hawai‘i reported 41 new COVID cases on Tuesday. That’s the largest single-day number during the pandemic so far. More important, though, is the continuing deterioration in California, our major source of tourists.

Until now, many throughout the state have taken comfort in the reality that Hawai‘i has largely escaped the worst ravages of COVID-19. That’s been particularly true here on Kaua‘i. Even with two new cases reported Tuesday — bringing Kaua‘i’s total to 40 — we remain a comparative COVID-19 sanctuary.

That reality has gotten a fair amount of media and public attention. Perhaps too much, since people in places like COVID-stricken California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Oregon and Washington doubtless see Hawai‘i in general — and Kaua‘i in particular — as a haven for escape.

But for people who have found reassurance in Kaua‘i’s comparatively limited COVID-19 situation so far, that perspective comes from looking in the wrong place. The threat is not here.

Let’s look just at California. In 2017, the last year for which state-by-state visitor counts are available from the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, 2,357,641 visitors came to Hawai‘i from California. That is several orders of magnitude more than any other state. Kaua‘i, which received 1.3 million tourists in 2019, got 388,338 from California — almost 40%.

Of that number, 115,356 came from the Los Angeles-Long Beach area alone, and 23,340 from the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario area generally known as the “Inland Empire.” In the last week or two, those two metro areas have been forced to reimpose many shutdown orders as COVID-19 cases have surged.

According to a widely followed COVID-19 database maintained by Johns Hopkins University, Los Angeles County, with 3,534 COVID-19 deaths, is the sixth-deadliest county in the country, and has the highest total number of COVID-19 cases of any county in the United States, at 116,570.

As in many other states, daily counts of new cases have been increasing rapidly. More than 4,000 new cases were reported in Los Angeles County Tuesday, more than double the number the day before. There were 45 deaths Tuesday, following 50 on Monday.

It’s true that Ige and state officials have committed to requiring a test or quarantine for visitors starting August 1, but Kaua‘i County officials have conceded that they are already challenged to enforce quarantine restrictions. As hard as the Kaua‘i Police Department and other county agencies and Hawai‘i National Guard have tried to monitor people supposed to be under quarantine, it was clear from what Kanoho said Tuesday that the monitoring system is in no way prepared for a substantial influx of visitors.

For example, an app and an online database to track quarantine status, which were both supposed to have been introduced weeks ago, don’t yet exist.

All of this ignores a possibly-even-more-urgent question about whether just one test would be enough to establish that incoming tourists are COVID-free. A proposal by a volunteer panel of doctors and community leaders has proposed a different approach, in which visitors would be required to have one test within 72 hours before arriving, submit to six days in quarantine and then have a second test.

Developments so far this week suggest that, while Ige apparently initially dismissed this proposal as practically unworkable, its proponents have not given up — nor should they.

Kawakami has not yet said anything publicly about whether or how Kaua‘i will press Ige for delay of the opening date or proceed with a stricter, alternate plan for Kaua‘i if necessary.

As one observer with knowledge of county internal deliberations put it: “Plans were made when we were in a different situation, and we have to consider adjustments given recent developments.”

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Allan Parachini is a Kilauea resident, furniture-maker, journalist and retired public-relations executive who writes periodically for The Garden Island.