HONOLULU (AP): On the rural island of Hawaii, Kauai, where extensive white sand beaches and spectacular coastal mountains attract visitors from around the world, local residents spent the first seven months of the pandemic under the protection of the viral storm.
Early and aggressive local measures, along with a strictly enforced quarantine of statewide travel, kept most of Kauai’s 72,000 residents healthy: the island had only 61 known cases of coronavirus from March to September. But on Oct. 15, the state launched a pre-trip testing program to revive Hawaii’s declining tourism economy.
Kauai went from having no infections to at least 84 new cases in seven weeks. The increase sowed the community’s transmission and caused the first – and so far only – death of COVID-19 Island: Ron Clark, who worked for decades as a tour driver.
Despite Hawaii’s cautious effort at reopening that allowed travelers who tested negative for COVID-19 before flying to the state to dodge quarantine rules, Kauai Peak illustrates the difficulty of preserving health. public, even on an isolated island, when economic recovery depends on travel. Kauai officials have decided that the cost of a vacation to paradise, for now, is too high.
Clark obtained COVID-19 in November and died about ten days later. At 84, he worked until he contracted the disease and, more recently, moved airline pilots and crew to and from the airport. Airline crews are exempt from state testing and quarantine regulations.
The day after Clark’s death, Kauai officials said they will opt for the state testing program and force visitors to quarantine again for two weeks, whether they are negative or not COVID-19 before. to arrive.
Kauai officials say the single test system did not do enough to protect the people who live there. With only nine ICU beds and 14 fans, the island’s sanitation system could be quickly overwhelmed by a major outbreak, Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami said.
In order to avoid this scenario, Kawakami proposed a second mandatory test for all passengers after arrival. His plan would have included a short quarantine while people waited for his second result.
“We believe that having a negative test is a good prerequisite for boarding a plane,” Kawakami said. But “once you land in Kauai … (travelers) should be able to sit and cool off for three days.”
But the proposal was rejected by state officials, and Democratic Gov. David Ige said the plan should be funded and administered locally.
Following the rise of Kauai, the State Department of Health located most of the island’s October and November cases to residents and tourists who carried the virus despite the pre-flight testing program. .
JoAnn Yukimura, a former mayor of Kauai and a friend of Ron Clark for more than three decades, said his death shook the community and that she constantly thought that “he would be alone in the hospital. … How lonely he must be. to die “.
“Ron’s death might seem to outsiders as such a small matter,” Yukimura said. But “it hit us hard because in Kauai we didn’t understand each other about death and illness, and we never want to get it.”
Before the pandemic, Hawaii welcomed about 30,000 tourists a day who spent about $ 18 billion last year.
In March, when the two-week state quarantine rule was imposed, tourist arrivals and incomes plummeted. Since then, the number of visitors has increased with the testing program, but only to about a third of pre-pandemic levels.
In Kauai, Edwin Pascua, 57, has been unemployed since March in the hotel shop job and worries about having contact with infected travelers, but prefers to work.
“If there are guarantees in place, that would reduce everything,” he said. “I wouldn’t be so scared.”
Pascua and his wife, who works at the same hotel, have secured unemployment benefits, but meet people who “have not yet received a check, an unemployment check.”
Despite the new infection it increases and records death in the continental U.S., top Hawaiian officials insist the pre-trip testing program works.
“The proof is in the pudding,” Hawaiian Lieutenant Governor Josh Green said. “Hawaii has the lowest COVID rate in the country because of this program right now.”
Hawaii enjoys relatively low hospitalization and mortality rates, but health experts said that because of the way COVID-19 builds up in the body over time, second tests for travelers would eliminate more infections. .
Dr. Kapono Chong-Hanssen, a native Hawaiian doctor who runs a Kauai community health center, said the requirement for the single test “goes against medical tests.”
“We’re starting to see these big holes in the plan and I think it’s a matter of time before we pay the price,” he said.
Since the launch of the testing program, according to the state health department, there have been more than 380 travel-related infections in Hawaii.
It is believed that the actual number of infections among the general population is much higher than reported. Many asymptomatic people, who can still spread the disease, are not tested.
Dr Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, said travel restrictions for most places at this time of the pandemic are “counterproductive or relatively useless” and can give a false start. feeling of security.
“There is evidence that international travel bans are helpful in slowing things down,” Jha said. But unless you “select your country completely and do it soon, it’s quite difficult to use it as a strategy.”
Kauai, isolated by the ocean and largely protected by early restrictions, had done exactly that.
When the original quarantine rule was in place, Kauai residents went to restaurants, schools were open, and locals spent their money on the community. This could happen again with the reinstatement of the quarantine rule by Kauai amid local hopes that the community will stay healthy.
The trips “introduce a steady stream of new infections,” said Dr. Janet Berreman, an official with the Kauai State Department of Health.
“This tsunami, if you will, of disease,” he said, “has marched across the continent, from east to west. We are a little further west through a mass of water. But everyone wants to come.” here for holidays ”.
___
Associated Press writer David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.