Last Friday, Lt. Gov. Josh Green sent a proposal to Gov. David Ige and Hawaii’s mayors urging them to eradicate our pre-travel testing program for those who have been vaccinated against COVID, essentially providing a vaccine passport to freely travel to Hawaii.
Importantly, those who are vaccinated would no longer need to provide proof of a negative COVID test in order to travel to and within Hawaii. Green claims that those who are vaccinated would have sterilization immunity, meaning they are not just immune to the negative effects of COVID, but they are also unable to be carriers of the virus and as a consequence they could not spread it to other people.
This is a bold claim for a doctor to be making, yet, Green claims he is basing this policy decision on science. If this is true, then show us the science.
The truth is that there is no definitive scientific evidence documenting sterilization immunity with these new vaccines. If anything, the opposite is true.
Instead of spending so much time worrying about reopening the island, Green should be laser-focused on vaccinating our local population. Our state is far behind other states in vaccinations, and while most states have started vaccinating those who are 65 and older, Hawaii is just beginning to vaccinate those who are 75 and older. As our country is on the verge of 500,000 deaths, new variants of the virus which are more transmissible and more deadly infect the U.S. at ever-growing rates.
Brooke Feinstein
Wailea