With thousands of Hawaii residents being vaccinated against COVID-19 every day, state officials are increasingly optimistic about the introduction of the vaccination passport, especially to facilitate inter-island travel. Tourism officials believe that the vaccination passport will not only encourage more tourists to come to the islands, but also promote inter-island travel for residents.
Hawaii’s lieutenant governor, Josh Green, announced this week that the state will partner with a local company, First Vitals, to develop an app that can reliably show that people have been vaccinated. It generates a unique QR code for travelers who have their vaccination records at least 14 days after their last entry.
ADVERTISEMENT
Current trend
They can view medical records and then encrypt them, so no one can steal someone’s medical data, Green noted. While it is simply a matter of knowing whether you have been vaccinated or not and the name and date of the vaccination, he added that people should just show their vaccination card instead of using the app while it is still under development.
At this point, it’s all conjecture, based on the assumption that Hawaii will soon decide to allow fully vaccinated travelers to bypass the current Safe Travel test restrictions. Currently, the Aloha pre-test program, designed to help travelers avoid the otherwise inevitable 10-day quarantine in Hawaii, does not provide an exemption for vaccinated visitors.
Green said Hawaii currently administers up to 10,000 doses of KOVID-19 vaccine per day and he thinks it is safe to move forward with this proposal. I’d love to test it with maps in mid-April, at least for inter-island travel. I guess that makes sense. This will allow about half of our travelers on the islands to travel safely immediately, he said, according to the Associated Press.
Mufi Hannemann, president and CEO of the Hawaii Housing and Tourism Association, told KHON Local2: This is what we see, families who haven’t seen each other in a long time, living in Kauai, Maui, Hawaii, Oahu. And it allows you to do these rides without the additional cost of testing.
Ultimately, it will be up to Hawaii’s governor, David Ige, to decide when and if vaccination cards should be introduced, with input from the islands’ mayors.
For more information, visit hawaiicovid19.com/travel.
Related Tags:
Feedback,Privacy settings,How Search works,hawaii covid vaccine passport,hawaii covid vaccine travel,hawaii digital vaccine passport,hawaii vaccine quarantine exemption,hawaii vaccine passport,hawaii covid restrictions,cdc travel to hawaii covid,hawaii vaccine bypass quarantine
