Mayor Rick Blangiardi announced a loosening of all capacity restrictions for large events, restaurants, social gatherings and gyms beginning Dec. 1.
It will be the first time in over a year and a half, since the pandemic began, that Oahu residents will be able to return to establishments without social distancing requirements.
“This is not about restrictions,” Blangiardi said Tuesday during a news conference updating the Safe O‘ahu Response plan. “This is about celebrating here, a moment in time that we’ve all worked hard to get to as the holidays approach.”
Social gatherings will have no capacity limit, although they are required to be “informal events,” meaning it should be at a park or someone’s home, not a commercial event, which would fall under a different category.
All large events also will be allowed to serve food and beverages, including alcohol, but those events will be subject to the Safe Access O‘ahu program, which requires proof of full vaccination status or a negative COVID-19 test within the past 48 hours. Currently, events can be attended only by those who are vaccinated, and a negative COVID-19 test is not accepted. Masking still will be required when not actively eating or drinking.
Currently, large events are able to operate at 100% capacity but are allowed to serve only water.
Rick Schneider, CEO of Events International Inc. and chairman of the political action committee of the Hawaii Events Coalition, was excited about the announcement, although he wished it had happened sooner.
“We’re extremely pleased that we finally moved to a place where we can actually operate again,” he said.
“It’s going to take some time for us to be able to come back up to speed because our booking horizon usually is six months to two years.”
He said that unlike a restaurant that can reopen its doors, large events take months to plan, so it will take six months to a year to see the types of revenue that large events were making before the pandemic.
“We’ve been having difficulty with our planned events for the first quarter of next year because there was no way for us to be able to assure our clients that that would be open,” Schneider said.
“This step now puts us in a place where it’s much easier to operate, and we can with confidence tell our client base that we will be able to operate their event.”
Another notable change is for restaurants, which no longer will need to keep 6-foot spacing between tables. Restaurants have been allowed to operate at full capacity, but with the 6-foot distancing requirement, that has limited particularly smaller restaurants from completely reopening.
“We’ve had restaurants that have literally been hanging on by their fingernails, waiting for this to happen in the hope that it would happen before the holidays,” said Hawai‘i Restaurant Association President Greg Maples.
“The fact that it’s going to happen starting next week is just huge.”
He estimated that about 30% of Hawaii’s restaurants have had to permanently close during the COVID-19 pandemic, although some have been able to reopen in a different capacity.
Fete Hawaii, located on Hotel Street, estimated that removal of the 6-foot distancing requirement would increase revenue by 15% to 20%.
“Each restaurant can plan accordingly to what they feel is best for their patrons,” said owner Chuck Bussler. “That really helps us out immensely.”
Bussler hoped that one thing that sticks around, even once the pandemic is over, is allowing Chinatown restaurants to continue to have outdoor seating.
“I love the idea that we can outdoor-dine, which we had never been able to do pre-pandemic,” he said.
Under the loosened restrictions, restaurants also will no longer be required to conduct contact tracing.
Safe Access O‘ahu still will be in place for gyms and restaurants, while gyms still will be required to enforce mask-wearing.
Gyms also will no longer be subject to any equipment distancing rules, and group fitness classes will be able to operate at full capacity.
Currently, group fitness classes have only been able to operate with 10 people indoors, including the instructor, and 25 people outdoors.
Blangiardi said he expects that the Safe Access O‘ahu program will continue indefinitely.
“We’re going to keep Safe Access O‘ahu on until we really feel that we’ve passed anything and everything we have to with respect to COVID,” he said. ”We want to get on the other side of the disease, especially here in Hawaii.”
Blangiardi was also confident that the city testing sites would be able to keep up with a possible increase in tests for unvaccinated people attending large events, and a general holiday surge in demand for tests being seen across the country.
The city will continue to monitor metrics such as hospitalization rates to determine whether more restrictions need to be put back in place if there is another surge of disease after the holidays.
