According to Hawaii’s Lieutenant Governor Josh Green, fully vaccinated travelers who received their shots in the continental U.S. may be eligible to visit the Aloha State without pretesting for COVID-19 as soon as July 1.
Last week, Green said he was confident Hawaii would likely hit a 60% statewide vaccination rate around the first of next month, reaching a threshold that Governor David Ige has said will trigger a quarantine and pretesting exemption for visitors immunized on the U.S. Mainland.
“In about three weeks, we should touch that 60% threshold,” Green said, noting that as of Tuesday, June 8, 53% of Hawaii’s residents had been immunized against COVID-19. “We've had the Safe Travels program with the pretest, which has worked very well to keep case counts down, but we also want to honor people’s commitment to being vaccinated.”
Safe Travels requires transpacific Hawaii visitors looking to bypass an otherwise mandatory 10-day quarantine to register online and then upload proof of a negative COVID-19 test conducted no more than 72 hours before their departure by a sanctioned testing partner.
After the state reaches a 60% vaccination rate among residents, however, fully immunized travelers who received their shots on the mainland will instead be able to upload an image of their vaccination card online and later present it to state officials at the airport in the Islands to bypass quarantine, Green said.
“And then, given the current trajectory of our vaccination program, sometime in early August – when the state of Hawaii is 70% vaccinated – we're going to drop, it appears, all restrictions,” said Green, who is a practicing emergency room physician. “There won't be any testing requirements or even vaccination requirements for travelers.”
Beginning today, the state will drop all pretest requirements for interisland flights and will begin to allow travelers who received their COVID-19 vaccinations in Hawaii to fly to the Islands on transpacific domestic flights and bypass quarantine without a pretest.
“The easing of travel restrictions is a direct result of our robust vaccination rate and a community that sacrificed,” Ige said in a June 4 statement. “We need to push hard now so we can get to the point where Safe Travels is no longer needed to keep the people of Hawaii safe.”