An estimated 28,000 travelers arrived in Hawaii, sparking officials to start asking questions about the widely discussed COVID-19 vaccine passport system in Hawaii.
Officials all around the world have begun setting up vaccination passport systems in their respective countries in an effort to open up restricted borders, live exhibitions and tourism.
As for the State of Hawaii, Lt. Gov. Josh Green estimated that he sees a vaccination tracking policy coming in the near future.
"Mark my words, when we are on May 1, we will have done 900,000 shots with the state and another 100,000 with the military. We’ll be at 1 million shots delivered and that's a ton of immunity,” Green told Hawaii Public Radio. “That’s what the whole nation and the world are going to do. So surely we should lead the way if we can. What we’ll see is come May, June, July, people will be able to demonstrate they’ve been vaccinated and that will be sufficient for travel.”
A proven inoculation is a more efficient way to show one’s safety and health than a pretest. However, a pretest worked when that was all the state had to work with, Green said.
“We’ll still tell them to wear masks, there’s no question. But that’s the way to go,” Green told Hawaii Public Radio.
Green showed that the infamous passport system would not only help open borders but also weddings, marathons and other events.
“If everyone’s immune, then you don’t have to worry about an outbreak,” Green told Hawaii Public Radio. “As public health goes, this is the way.”
Moreover, Green said that the state is having discussions with a couple of businesses about initiating the vaccination passport system.
“They have to have the technology to be able to look into databases that are just showing whether or not a person’s been vaccinated and match that with their identifiers like their name and birthdate,” Green told Hawaii Public Radio. “What sounds pretty simple is actually quite complicated especially if you're talking about multiple states, multiple systems.”