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A female health care worker from California — who had unknowingly treated a patient with the new coronavirus in Northern California — landed in Honolulu with coldlike symptoms Thursday and tested negative Friday morning in the first COVID-19 test conducted in Hawaii.
Coordination between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in California and Hawaii health officials led to tracking down the woman to get her tested through the Hawaii State Laboratory, according to Dr. Sarah Kemble, the state Health Department’s deputy state epidemiologist.
When the unidentified health care worker got on the plane in California for her Hawaii vacation, the patient she treated had not yet tested positive, said state Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo.
“Later CDC confirmed it, and that’s when they started tracing all of the different health care workers who came into contact,” Okubo said.
CDC officials in California notified the state Health Department on Thursday night about the health care worker from California.
Hawaii health officials told the woman to quarantine herself in her hotel room as the Hawaii State Laboratory ran CDC tests that came up negative Friday morning.
The length of the hotel quarantine would have depended on the severity of the woman’s illness had she tested positive, Kemble told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Kemble declined to say whether the woman was traveling alone or with others, or where in Northern California she came in contact with the coronavirus patient.
On Thursday, Kemble told the state Senate’s Ways and Means Committee that she had expected Hawaii to see its first coronavirus test next week.
Hawaii, like other states, was awaiting the replacement of defective testing kits from the CDC, which consist of three components to test and compare a swab from the nose or mouth. There were problems with the third component in the kit, but the CDC has now said that the faulty third component can be ignored.
Hawaii received defective tests from the CDC, but only one of three components was defective, Kemble told the Star-Advertiser on Friday.
The other two showed that the California health care worker did not have coronavirus, or COVID-19.
“The state does now have the capacity to test for COVID-19 here in Hawaii,” Gov. David Ige said Friday at a news conference at the state Health Department. “The test result was negative for COVID-19.”
Another test showed that “the individual had the common cold,” Ige said.
Ige continued to urge people to practice “good hygiene. Wash hands. Cover coughs. Avoid going to work when you’re sick. Stay at home and be prepared. Develop your preparedness plan for your family to make sure that, should there be an incident, your family is prepared.”
Later Friday, Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim issued an emergency proclamation to prepare the Big Island for a potential outbreak of coronavirus.
The proclamation “will allow for greater mobilization of county resources, positions the county for reimbursement should state or federal monies become available, allow for coordination with federal, state and NGO (nongovernmental organization) partners and allow for reassignment of county personnel if necessary,” Kim’s office said in announcing the proclamation.
In a statement, Mayor Kim said, “Our goal is to stop the virus, and if it does come here, to mitigate the spread of the virus.”
Just before Ige’s news conference, House Speaker Scott Saiki announced plans for a special select committee of community and political leaders to prepare contingency plans to cope with the economic fallout from the coronavirus scare.
“Hawaii will be hit hard because of our proximity to Asia and our fragile economy that relies heavily on imports,” Saiki told his fellow lawmakers at the close of Friday’s House floor session at the state Capitol.
Saiki told reporters after the session that committee members will include business, labor and government leaders and be tasked with identifying short- and long-term mitigation plans. The committee will be advisory, he said.
Lawmakers have been considering some expensive new initiatives such as teacher pay differentials to boost the salaries of educators in hard-to-fill positions. But Saiki said it is too soon to say whether those plans might be put on hold because of the coronavirus threat.
Saiki said he is determined to avoid a replay of public school furloughs that were used to cope with the budget shortfall during the Great Recession that rocked the state in 2008-2009.
“For those of us who were here in 2008 and 2009 during Furlough Fridays, we don’t want to see the public have to go through that again,” he said. “That was very traumatic for our students, for parents, for teachers, for everyone.”
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