Hawaii Is Riding Out the COVID-19 Storm. But Geographic Isolation Isn ’t the Blessing it May Seem

When Hawaii’s coronavirus infections were rising in late August, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell visited doctors in the COVID-19 ward of The Queen’s Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital. “I could see it in their faces and in their eyes,” Caldwell says. “The concern and fear they had that, by the following week, if things didn’t change, they were not going to be able to care for people, that they were going to have to put them in tents outside.” It was a crisis that leaders in the 50th state hoped they would never face. Between March and May, when a stay-at-home order was in place, Hawaii was averaging only a couple of new cases every day. But as some restrictions were lifted in June, resulting in a patchwork of state and local rules, the numbers soon began inching up. By late July, Hawaii was metaphorically ablaze, with the bulk of cases centered on Oahu, home to two-thirds of the state’s population. The island logged 119 new cases on July 30; by mid-August, it was averaging over 200 a day. Four days after his hospital visit, with more than 350 people hospitalized for COVID-19 symptoms on his island, Caldwell issued a second lockdown order with the blessing of Hawaii’s governor, David Ige. “Our hospital administrators had informed us if we [didn’t] do something, that they would become overwhelmed,” says Ige. Three months later, it seems Hawaii’s response may have worked. As a new, dead...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news