Hawaii Gov. David Ige asked tourists to voluntarily stay away from the state amid a record surge in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations, though he stopped short of placing onerous restrictions on out-of-state visitors.
Throughout the pandemic, Hawaii has had some of the strictest measures in the US in place and required all visitors to either quarantine for 10 days or present a negative Covid test upon arrival. Early last month,The restrictions had sharply limited new Covid-19 cases for much of the past year but had a brutal economic impact on a state so heavily reliant on tourism.
As of July, Hawaii had a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 7.3%, sixth worst among all states,. Further, Hawaii had the highest unemployment rate of any state when looking at the most broadly defined category of unemployment, known as U-6, which includes discouraged workers and people forced to work part time because full time work is not available.
Gov. Ige acknowledged these issues but still asked visitors not to come to better protect hospitals from being overwhelmed. "Certainly, our call to reduce travel to the islands to only central businesses will have an impact on the numbers who come here, but I also would like to point out that our hospitals are at capacity, our ICUs are full. We are working on surge plans and every facility to expand capacity, we're transitioning acute care beds to be able to support those who are sick," he said.
"And so, I do know that that's a risk, but I believe that as a community that's a risk we have to take to discourage travel to the islands until we can get to a better place with our health care facilities."
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