State authorities are moving toward airport temperature testing and restricting neighbor island air traffic in the latest measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Adjutant Gen. Kenneth Hara, incident commander with the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, told the state Senate COVID-19 Special Committee this afternoon that the decision to restrict interisland air travel was made during a teleconference today between Gov. David Ige, the county mayors and emergency managers.

“The decision is that we’re going to do it,” Hara told the senators.

However, details of how to implement the effort and how exemptions would be handled still must be worked out, he said.

For example, he said, the restriction could lead Hawaiian Airlines to discontinue service and thus block critical cargo from reaching the neighbor islands.

“We’re thinking through that,” he said.

Ige, who has yet to issue a supplemental order adding the neighbor islands, provided a less affirmative response to a Honolulu Star-Advertiser query.

“We are currently examining what would be required to implement the 14-day mandatory quarantine for interisland travel,” he said.

On the temperature testing, Hara said 100 percent testing would be implemented at airports, but that details of how to accomplish that must still be ironed out.

Hara said the director general of Taiwan helped convince him that thermal screening was worth it. The director general told him that it had a 40% success rate with catching travelors with the coronavirus.

“To me, that’s good enough, so we’re going to press forward,” Hara said.