Hawaii leaders review future of Safe Travels Hawaii program

Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, says it’s unlikely the state would ever reinstate Safe Travels Hawaii in its current form.

Still, state leaders have begun convening to determine the next generation of Safe Travels, Hawaii’s $37 million-plus pandemic-era travel policy, which ended March 25.

Hara, who directed National Guard troops to boost the state’s COVID-19 response, said if the state wanted to reinstate Safe Travels Hawaii as previously designed, it would need to contract out for everything.

“Not only would this take months to do, it’s unlikely that screeners would be available,” he said.

Still, a lot of other ideas are being proposed.

The state’s chief information officer, Doug Murdock, said the Safe Travels web application is being retained, along with its codes, configurations and workflow, in case there is a need to restart the program.

“We are looking into possibilities of using the Safe Travels technology for other things, perhaps being used in the visitor industry. We are still in discussions and exploring ideas,” Murdock said.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority hopes to hire a consultant that can use Safe Travels to develop a “smart destination” initiative, which would use technology to manage tourism.

HTA President and CEO John De Fries told the HTA Branding Committee on Wednesday that the agency has been asked to be part of a group “to look at what the next generation of Safe Travels should be, could be, and present it in a way that is much more comprehensive.”

De Fries said the effort is being headed by HI-EMA and the state Office of Enterprise Technology Services, and includes the state departments of Health, Transportation and Business, Economic Development and Tourism, and airport leaders.

“I’m especially impressed by HI-EMA’s lead,” he said. “It is having to integrate TSA into this and Homeland Security in reaching agencies that, frankly, are well outside of HTA’s bandwidth but are going to become increasingly important for the right system to be developed.”

Gov. David Ige already has talked to a federal task force about the U.S. adopting future travel policies that include being able to require health-related testing and verify tests.

“Just as 9/11 instituted changes in security on travel in general with the new TSA checks and those kinds of things, I really am advocating that they should establish some process for health emergencies and being able to require testing and other kinds of health screening,” Ige told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser during a March 24 interview, “because we don’t want to end up having to see the same kind of shutdown of the (visitor) industry when an infectious disease starts to circulate in the community.”

It’s not clear what Safe Travels might look like in the future. Still, it’s unlikely the most expensive and labor-intensive aspects of the most recent program will resurface.

Federal regulations prohibited the use of airport funds for pandemic screening, so the state contracted with Roberts Hawaii, a visitor tour and transportation company, to supply Safe Travel screeners at a cost of more than $22 million.

Likewise, the state had to contract with the state Department of Defense to supply National Guard troops for about $368,000 worth of services, including the monitoring of 114 thermal cameras, a $30 million investment, to detect passengers with fevers, and 98 facial-recognition cameras to help find them before they left the airport.

The state originally signed a 10-year contract with Japanese tech company NEC Corp. to install and maintain the cameras at airports in Honolulu, Lihue, Kahului, Kailua-Kona and Hilo. However, at this juncture it’s not clear whether the state will use the cameras again or even whether the expense would be worth it.

DOD spokesman Jeff Hickman said the state could not say how many passengers were flagged by the thermal cameras or how many of those people had COVID-19.

Hawaii’s camera experience is in keeping with national trends. Months before Hawaii detected its first case of COVID-19 in March 2020, the U.S. government already was using thermal-camera technology at 15 of the nation’s largest airports to screen passengers from certain countries for enhanced health checks.

The program — which applied to people who had been in China, Iran, most countries in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Brazil — was short-lived.

Less than a year after it began, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the enhanced health screenings, which included temperature checks and questioning of travelers about COVID-19 symptoms, had “limited effectiveness” because some infected people have no symptoms or only minor ones.

The CDC said that of the 675,000 travelers who went through the process, the extra screening identified fewer than 15 who were found to have COVID-19.

State Sen. Sharon Moriwaki (D, Kakaako-McCully- Waikiki) said she expects the Senate to vote early this week on a resolution, SCR 193, that asks the state DOT to develop a plan for “the cost-effective disposition of the Safe Travels thermal screening and tracing camera equipment and other related operations.”

“If we have to upload Safe Travels again, we don’t want to get all new equipment,” Moriwaki said. “But they don’t have to use it for Safe Travels. They could repurpose them. These cameras are for security. They could ask for federal funds.”

Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics, said some equipment costs might be water under the bridge because that’s what happens when an emergency response kicks in as a reflection of unpreparedness rather than resiliency.

“We had nothing in place until Oct. 15, 2020, when Safe Travels started. We were using 19th-century technology for the first six months of the pandemic,” he said. “They had a quarantine in 1840. It was called quarantine island, and the boats stopped at what we call Sand Island and you got off and stayed for two weeks and then you came to Honolulu.”

Brewbaker said Safe Travels was clunky and labor- intensive but successful enough as a public health intervention to provide a foundation on which to build a better system.

“It’s a really good idea to design the next nonpharmaceutical intervention to be more automated, more effective, more efficient, less labor- intensive, less costly and less throttling of an economic activity of which we are trying to preserve,” he said.

The question of how to repurpose the camera technology is only one part of a broader discussion about whether Hawaii should have a version of Safe Travels in the future and what it should look like.

HTA Chief Brand Officer Kalani Ka‘ana‘ana said the agency plans to participate in the state discussion, which will inform development of its Hawaii smart- destination initiative.

Ka‘ana‘ana envisions that Safe Travels could be one of the tourism management tools in the initiative, which he hopes would serve as a “regenerative tourism engine” — a one-stop source where visitors can get educational and emergency information, make reservations to visit natural and cultural resources, shop for Hawaii goods and services, and possibly book Hawaii travel and activities.

Even though visitors no longer need COVID-19 tests or vaccines to enter Hawaii, Ka‘ana‘ana envisions they could use Safe Travels to input the agricultural form they currently fill out on the plane. He said travelers also could sign “pono pledges” to be on good behavior and respect Hawaii’s culture, people and places.

HTA already is working with Sen. Glenn Wakai (D, Kalihi-Salt Lake-Aliamanu), who has been pushing the state to digitize its agricultural declaration form. De Fries said he has requested Ka‘ana‘ana reach out to airlines that might be interested in piloting a digital form.

Wakai, who chairs the Senate’s Committee on Economic Development, Tourism and Technology, said he also wants to see Hawaii build on its investment in thermal and facial-recognition camera technology.

“Getting rid of facial-recognition cameras and thermal screening is a ridiculous idea,” Wakai said. “We are moving toward the day when you and I don’t need a phone or a card, we just use our face to get access and pay for things. I think the future is right in front of our faces, so to speak.”

Brewbaker said broad debate about the future of Hawaii tourism is healthy but added that leaders must incorporate the lessons learned from Safe Travels to become more resilient and to seek solutions that are less labor-intensive and more technologically advanced.

“If we don’t, we’re a sitting duck” waiting for the next unpredictable event with potentially severe consequences, he said.

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The Associated Press contributed to this story.