Hawaii National Guard’s COVID-19 response mission is extended

The Hawaii National Guard is continuing its COVID-19 response mission nearly two years after it began as state leaders try to make sense of the highly contagious omicron variant.

The Hawaii Guard’s COVID-19 joint task force was set to demobilize last month. A ceremony marking the end of the mission was set for Dec. 17, and guardsmen with the task force were expected to get two weeks of leave.

“That was right when omicron cases started to hit the hundreds here in Hawaii, and so the day before the event, they canceled it,” said state Department of Defense spokesman Jeff Hickman.

Rising omicron cases and hospitalizations have put a strain on the state’s hospitals, which are short-staffed.

The Guard’s task force currently numbers about 500 soldiers and airmen, though commanders are prepared to expand it if Gov. David Ige requests more troops.

“We do have the capability to plus up to over 1,000, so if we do get asked, we do have that leeway,” said Hickman.

After the World Health Organization officially declared the coronavirus a pandemic in March 2020, Gov. David Ige appointed Hawaii National Guard commander Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara to oversee the state’s response to the crisis. The following month the state activated more than 300 Hawaii guardsmen to assist with response efforts. At its peak the joint task force had more than 800 troops.

The Guard has assisted various state agencies by providing extra personnel. For much of the pandemic, Hawaii guardsmen were stationed at each major airport to help enforce the Safe Travels program, aided with contact tracing efforts, and conducted outreach and delivered masks in low-income housing units. When vaccines began arriving in the islands in December 2020, guardsmen helped administer them.

The task force scaled back its presence on the neighbor islands in 2021 but is prepared to increase numbers again in response to requests for assistance, though Hickman said there are several conducting missions around the islands helping local officials with testing, COVID-19 mapping and other tasks.

As hospitalizations rise across the country, the administration of President Joe Biden has been mulling over plans to deploy active-duty military personnel to assist in states that have been hit the hardest. In several states, guardsmen have been deployed to help beleaguered hospitals. But so far in Hawaii there have been no requests for guardsmen at hospitals.

“We are working a lot with the prisons with the Public Safety Department. We’re doing testing at … Waiawa, Oahu Community Correctional Center and Halawa,” said Hickman.

This isn’t the first extension for the Hawaii National Guard’s COVID-19 mission. In June as vaccination became more widespread and many restrictions were lifted, Ige gave Hara orders to make plans to demobilize the task force by September when federal funding was set to stop.

But by August the spreading COVID-19 delta variant and a surge in cases led officials to extend the task force’s mission until December. The current extension keeps guardsmen on duty until March 15. Hickman said that at this time there are no plans for a ceremony in March.

The pandemic has been demanding on National Guard units across the country, with both state leaders and the federal government constantly throwing new missions at the part-time troops to tackle on top of their civilian jobs and duties.

Alongside pandemic response, guardsmen have been called to natural disasters and deployed around the globe — including a year to Washington, D.C., to provide security after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This month the Hawaii National Guard announced that about 100 soldiers are expected to deploy to the Middle East in 2023.