Lieutenant Governor Dr. Josh Green on his Facebook page has published his plan for restoring the economy by stopping the spread of COVID-19. He also says he is recommending to City and County of Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell and Governor David Ige that they modify the current restrictions in place on the island of O’ahu. Currently, outdoor activities are allowed for individuals, and Green says he would like that modified to allow families to swim, hike, and play outside together. He feels that is safer and makes sense.
The additional steps Green has outlined to help the state reopen are below:
1) Everyone in Hawaii must wear a mask over their nose and mouth at all times when not at home, with clear and consistent enforcement of masking along with responsible social distancing in all public places and other effective hygienic measures.
2) As quickly as possible, we must increase our statewide testing capacity to 10,000 tests per day so we can see spikes in COVID spread before they get out of control, and we can aggressively and proactively test all symptomatic people, high-risk groups that have seen spikes in infection rates, those in high risk professions such as health-care workers, and every close contact of those who have tested positive, followed by quickly isolating every infected person until they recover.
3) Hawaii must immediately employ 500 full-time contact tracers and implement a rapid, thorough and comprehensive program of tracing and testing everyone who has come in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID, using every available resource and technology to support, coordinate and strengthen an effective tracing effort.
4) We must increase hospital staffing statewide by at least 300 nurses and 100 beds for COVID this month, and prepare to launch our 150 emergency mobile hospital beds, staffing them with a mix of National Guard and private sector health-care professionals.
5) We must be publicly transparent with COVID data, publishing updated and accurate information to the people of Hawaii daily, including the number and location of cases, number of people tested and contacts traced, number of people in quarantine, and number of new cases. This will ensure that our COVID response is accountable to the people for protecting and informing them, and for producing the results and success we must achieve.
