Hawaii has announced it will officially welcome tourists back on 1 November. The announcement has been made by the governor of the state David Ige. He tweeted: “I’m encouraged by the continuing trend of lower case counts of COVID in our islands. Our hospitals are doing better and seeing fewer patients. This gives us the ability to move forward in our economic recovery and safely welcome back fully vaccinated domestic travelers.”

The state will allow non-essential as well as business travellers to visit the island. The governor further said that they will keep monitoring case counts and hospitalisations in the islands as the health and safety of the residents is most important.

Earlier, the governor had asked travellers to Hawaii to delay their trips because of rising cases COVID-19 cases on the island but he never officially stopped the state’s ‘Safe Travels’ programme. Under this programme, domestic visitors were allowed to skip quarantine if they came with proof of vaccination or proof of a negative test.

In his tweet, the governor also said: “We’re continuing to seek information from the federal government about plans for international travel and will have an appropriate plan in place prior to 8 November.”

(Source: Times of India)