Another Reason Why Hawaii Not Ready for Tourism

“We don’t want to scare the public. We still are able to address our testing needs currently in the state and plans are being made to increase our capacity. Unfortunately, this may cause the return of the results to be multiple days instead of the 24-hour turnaround.” These are the words of Dr. Scott Miscovich who leads the broad testing efforts in Hawaii in response to a major setback in COVID-19 testing supplies in the islands.

Because of a surge in coronavirus cases across America, the mainland supplier of chemicals that are used to run tests here in Hawaii, especially at one of the state’s biggest labs in Hawaii, namely Diagnostic Laboratory Services (DLS),  is at a severe disadvantage. This cut in supply from Roche is going to set back testing capacity in half.

Right now, the state has been able to process about 5,000 tests per day. This will be knocked back to 2,500 in a state with a population close to 1.4 million people.

“Roche basically just cut them off. With the surge on the mainland they’re steering towards their big customers … these massive health systems. We just had our testing capabilities cut in half,” Miscovich added. Roche is being forced to direct their supplies to intensive care units in hospitals that are currently overrun.

The remaining labs, including Clinical Laboratories of Hawaii, are working together to address the state’s COVID-19 testing needs, especially the most critical, hospitalized patients, he added.

This could not have come at a worse time with the state still planning to reopen trans-Pacific travel next month in August. Already, the arrival numbers are steadily climbing every day.

Also, students will be starting school next month, and that could lead to increased potential cases of COVID-19 as students gather in great numbers and the need for greater testing ability.

#rebuildingtravel