So Do We Have Contact Tracers?
By Tom Yamachika, President

Last week we discussed contact tracers, the people at the Department of Health who are supposed to follow up with COVID-19 positive patients and trace their contacts in order to either find their sources of infection or at least let the people with whom they were in contact know that they have been exposed to the virus.  It’s been said that “contact tracing is a key component in controlling large outbreaks and it becomes even more important as infections are driven down to ensure the state does not see further spikes.” 

On June 10, according to our Director of Health as reported in the Legislative Auditor’s recent report, the Health Department then had 60 full time staff who work on contact tracing and the target was to have an additional 320 health professionals trained by mid-July.  He also said that nearly 1,400 people signed up for contact tracing training at the University of Hawaii.

The truth, however, was that the 60 staff were full time workers but, as Sen. Donna Kim was told, did not necessarily work on contact tracing full time.  And what of the people trained at the University of Hawaii?  On August 4, Hawaii News Now reported that nearly 450 people went through the training program but the State only hired 20 of them.  HNN followed one person who took the training hoping to get hired and help the State, but when she followed up with the Health Department to see if she was a candidate, she received an email from the university telling her not to contact the Department directly.

Why couldn’t such a person be onboarded quickly to help fight the crisis?  “You cannot just take someone because they have clinical background or [epidemiological] background,” HNN quoted the Department’s Dr. Sarah Park as saying.  “They have to be trained on what we do. … [Otherwise] you are gonna cause more problems than help.”  So, the people supposedly trained by the University of Hawaii were not in fact job-ready but needed to be trained again. 

And then, of course, there was another issue:  Where would you put the contact tracers once they were trained (twice)?  They would need space, and equipment like computers and phones.  But, as Dr. Park testified during a Senate hearing on Aug. 6, as reported by Hawaii Public Radio:  “Our grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not actually allow us to rent space," she said. "They do not allow us to renovate space, basically don't allow us to do anything for space. They give us money to be able to hire people. They allow us to use our funds to obtain certain amount of equipment, but they do not allow us to use ... any of those funds to identify and secure any space anywhere. And so that's been extremely stressful, extremely problematic.”

Ultimately, the contact tracers set up shop in the Hawaii Convention Center, and the Department of Health held a press conference there on August 19.  The Department then said there were 126 contact tracers on the job with another 13 support staff. 

“What’s going to stop this disease from spreading in Hawaii is not the number of contact tracers, it’s going to be everyone’s behavior,” Anderson said.

So where does that leave us?  Apparently, the Department doesn’t want people to know.  They have told the media that because of their extreme workload, they will only respond to media questions during scheduled news briefings.  The State Auditor’s office complained of getting the runaround as well.  On August 28, the Department shot back, saying, “Employees attempted to accommodate the auditor’s very short time frame for interviews, despite the fact these employees are balancing a number of requests on top of their pandemic response duties.”

Folks, we have a pandemic going on.  If the best way to control it is by everyone’s behavior, as Director Anderson stated, people will need to trust those who would tell them what to do.  We taxpayers are stressed and anxious, and we have questions.  Would you trust someone who answered your questions with, “Shut up and just do as we told you”?  We need timely answers and fixes to what has been going wrong.  Then maybe one day we will be able to trust government again.

State of Hawaii's Online Safe Travels System
becomes mandatory effective Sept. 1
The State of Hawaii is implementing its new, mandatory online Safe Travels system, beginning Sept. 1. The Safe Travels System will modify the current County of Maui application process.
“This modified process enforces travel quarantines and protects our communities from the spread of COVID-19,” Mayor Michael Victorino said. “This new procedure is a welcome step toward a more efficient, streamlined process to speed up traveler processing at airports. We want to ensure that everyone is safe and healthy while traveling, and I appreciate the public’s patience and understanding as our quarantine screening and enforcement procedures evolve.”
Travelers to Maui County airports are reminded that they must submit applications for limited travel quarantine online at mauicounty.gov by clicking on the “requested for limited quarantine form” icon. Requests should be completed at least 3 days prior to the requestor’s departure.
For those applying for a Limited Quarantine Exemption, the application should be completed BEFORE submitting the separate online Safe Travels application. The new state form has a field to input a traveler’s limited quarantine application number. This is provided to a traveler after applying for it online.
All air travelers need to fill out the online Safe Travels application at https://travel.hawaii.gov, regardless of whether they are seeking a limited quarantine. Travelers between Lahaina and Manele harbors will continue to use paper mandatory travel form.
A traveler seeking a limited quarantine for home-to-work exemption must first go to mauicounty.gov. Click on the orange “Request for Limited Quarantine Form.” Please read all the information carefully, and be sure to provide ALL necessary documentation.
Needed information, including what travelers need to prepared to provide, specifically:
• A medical letter from a treating physician
• Essential Work Letter from employer on business letterhead, including dates of travel, jobsite/workplace in Maui County
• Copy of a government-issued ID
If traveling for medical reasons and returning to Maui for an essential job, travelers must submit both of the above documents. Travelers need to take pictures of needed documents for uploading as a photo on the Request for Limited Quarantine Form. (Only .png and .jpg photo types can be uploaded. The system does not accept .pdf files.) The address sought is the location of a jobsite or location of place of lodging for quarantine.
Requests for limited quarantine that do not qualify include: •Trips to see family and/or friends or attend funerals
•COVID-19 negative test
•Travel identified as personal errands

Source: County of Maui Facebook Page

Case of the Missing Contact Tracer Millions
By Tom Yamachika, President 
The story you are about to read is true.  The names have not been changed to protect the innocent.  This is the city:  Honolulu, Hawaii.  I live here.  I’m a doggie.

This is the Case of the Missing Contact Tracer Millions.

In a previous column the Boss mentioned $1.25 billion that the federal government made available to Hawaii through the CARES Act.  (I wanted to howl about the real possibility that lots of that money will disappear at year’s end.)

Another federal act was passed after the CARES Act to throw a few more bones to those using the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).  That act, the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, also made $11 billion more available to the states.  Hawaii’s share of this additional money was roughly $50 million.  It was supposed to be for necessary expenses to develop or scale up COVID-19 testing, conduct surveillance, trace contacts, and other pandemic related activities.

In Senate Bill 75, the legislature told us what we were going to do with that money.  $36 million was to go to the Department of Transportation for thermal screening and related uses, and $14 million was to go the Department of Health for outbreak control, contact tracing, and personal protective equipment.

The bill also said that both agencies were to submit a monthly report to the governor and legislature that details all allocations and expenditures.

Governor Ige allowed the bill to become law without his signature on July 15th.  None of the appropriations just mentioned were vetoed or reduced.  So, the Department of Health was able to fetch $14 million.

It doesn’t seem like $14 million was spent on contact tracing.  When a group of senators raided the Department to sniff around, they found only a handful of overworked tracers where there were supposed to be closer to a hundred.

As mentioned, the appropriation act required monthly reports to the legislature on how the money was spent.  Reports to the legislature from an executive department are called Departmental Communications and are available on the Legislature’s website.  I pawed through the departmental communications from May 5 to August 20, DC 432 to DC 492, and none of them were from the Department of Health.  (There was no Department of Transportation report either.)

I’m not the only one trying to dig up information on where the money went.  On August 19, U.S. Representative Anna Eshoo of California, who chairs the Subcommittee on Health of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote a letter to Governor Ige asking the same question.  She said that “less than two months ago, Hawaii had the lowest number of COVID-19 cases per capita of any state in the nation. 

However, this trend has reversed and now Hawaii has the highest infection rate in the United States.”  She requested specific information, and the last request was:  “Due to numerous instances of conflicting and false information being released to the public by your Department of Health regarding the number of contract tracers employed and their capabilities, what specific actions will you take to restore the integrity of the Department of Health?”

Yipe!  Talk about pointed questions!

This is a true story.  The end of the story has not yet been written.  We too will be following the money, or trying to, and will continue to bark like crazy if we can’t. 

Ours is a tough job but someone has to do it. 

The name’s Watch Doggie.