Honolulu Mayor Caldwell rings the alarm bell on tourism today

Today, Honolulu Mayor introduced a “Fish to Dish” program to support O‘ahu’s critical fisheries infrastructure.

At the same time, today, 41 cases of community-spread cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus were reported in the State of Hawaii. 38 were recorded on the island of Oahu, 2 on Kauai, and 1 on the Big Island.

The city of Honolulu was informed that the State of Hawaii did not have enough contact tracers working to respond to the rapid increase in new cases. Contact tracing is essential when keeping the virus isolated. Mayor Caldwell expressed his disappointment and said, “We need to do better, and we need to do better immediately.”

If our Health Department in the State of Hawaii cannot even handle a local increase of 41 cases in a day, how could Hawaii handle a larger increase after welcoming visitors? Mayor Caldwell indicated he may postpone the Kalakaua Street Festival, but there is a bigger issue.

US citizens are no longer welcome to travel to most of the world, including Europe and Asia. Governments of these countries would not consider Hawaii to be safe when the rest of our country failed to follow the rules. Apparently, as a US State, Hawaii cannot exclude Americans to travel here, but instead welcomes foreigners.

Opening the travel and tourism industry is becoming a bigger question mark by the day. Mayor Caldwell was powerful in his response to eTurboNews that he would do anything to keep Honolulu safe, even if it means to sacrifice our economy.

When asked by eTurboNews about replacing travel to create travel bubbles with regions that have low or no COVID-19 (New Zealand, Guam, or possibly Japan), the Mayor said Hawaii is part of the United States.

Not being up for election, the state can be fortunate to have Kirk Caldwell as a Mayor right now.

#rebuildingtravel