The number of new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday was 824 – fewer than 1,384 new cases on Monday. Lt. Gov. Josh Green, who is also an emergency doctor on the island of Hawaii, shared what to know about the latest numbers.
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On the current status of COVID-19 in Hawaii
JOSH GREEN: Today we have 824 cases and we have 112 people in the hospital, 53 of whom are vaccinated, which means they got two vaccinations. Twenty people are in the intensive care unit and our positivity rate is 12.2%. So we’re definitely still on the upswing with COVID and the Omicron surge. What we are seeing right now is that our hospital numbers have increased, they have tripled in the last two weeks. And that’s obvious because there are many more cases. But with this number of cases we would otherwise have expected a much higher number in the hospital. And our current hospital admission rate is about 0.77% of the cases we have confirmed – so 112 people in the hospital and we have 14,514 active cases. So that tells us that Omicron is very contagious – spreading like wildfire, but less severely. And people who are vaccinated and boosted don’t get so sick that they end up in intensive care. That’s how we see it now. And I assume that the number of cases will probably increase by mid-January, between January 10th and 15th, our case numbers will be very high. And then our hospital numbers should peak based on what is currently going on around January 20th. And then that will go down. The question remains how many cases in total will be in the hospital and whether we can handle them. And that’s why we’re going to get additional help.
On the possible further development of the Safe Travels program in the wake of the ongoing pandemic
The Safe Travels program may need further development. It’s one of the tools that made us the safest in the country. You know, we still have the lowest COVID rate in the country and the second lowest death rate – by a wide margin. That worked for us, even though we’re a great tourist destination. But we may have to change a little bit because you will see some cases get through. That is obviously the case. Well, travelers’ cases are not the predominant cases, despite what other people would like to share because they like to differentiate us from them – and that is not a healthy distinction. We see very few cases that end up in the state of Hawaii and require treatment when they travel here. Almost no one had to be hospitalized from their travels. And the spread that we see is of course community spread because we’re five times as much with each other. We spend all the time with our families and colleagues, this is how COVID spreads. However, it may be required to move on to Safe Travels’ next step, which is to have people upgraded or tested – that is, the full criteria to bypass the quarantine is your vaccinations plus a booster that works within 72 Charged or fully tested hours after travel. That will help us too, but by the time it is implemented we will have passed the peak of that particular surge. It’s just about really describing what it means to be vaccinated.
When testing more people for COVID-19 at airports
We can, but what other people suggest is impossible. And it’s frustrating to see repeated suggestions that most of all people know are unconstitutional – you can’t force people to undergo a medical procedure or test. You can force them to go into quarantine. You can’t make people take a mandatory test, you can’t. Second, the suggestions that come up often, and that is a controversial point, namely to test everyone when they get off an airplane, should have 35,000 tests available to us every day. We only have 10 to 12,000 available at peak times. So by those who propose this, do you mean that we don’t have the resources to test our own people when they get sick? Is that what you propose? Because I’m actually a healthcare provider who takes care of patients. And I need these tests to take care of sick people. So this argument is not meant to be serious. This argument is a philosophical one. And I’m a serious person trying to deal with a crisis. So I would prefer people to make suggestions that could actually be implemented.
For information on vaccine and testing sites, see hawaiicovid19.com/vaccine.
This interview was aired on The conversation on December 28, 2021. The Conversation will air on weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
