A total of 244 travelers are to depart Honolulu for Pago Pago on the final repatriation flight from Honolulu, Thursday, July 29th.
Previous Task Force updates said that despite nearly 350 travelers originally confirmed for Repat 8.0, 207 dropped out, and 19 were no shows. Such occurrences have been common throughout the repatriation program and led to back-up travelers being notified on short notice to fill the flights.
Repat #8 also includes dialysis patients and service animals. 149 travelers are fully vaccinated, 95 are either partial or unvaccinated, and 7 opted to receive vaccination while in quarantine.
Several outbound only Medicaid flights are still confirmed for both August 5th and August 12th and the focus of the Task Force meetings was centered on finalizing preparations for the tentatively scheduled August 26th flight.
The Task Force wishes to clarify a misnomer that it will be “re-opening the borders” between the mainland USA/Hawaii and American Samoa and a growing assumption that there will be no travel restrictions in the coming months.
The discontinuation of the ASG’s repatriation efforts will result in a turnover of commercial booking to Hawaiian Airlines but does not necessarily mean an immediate return to the twice-a-week pre-corvid flight schedules.
Public health experts in the Task Force have continued to emphasize that we are still in the midst of a pandemic. Despite some improvements and relaxed restrictions across the country in recent months, the delta variant has led to concerning reports of surges in new cases and hospitalizations across nearly every state in the country. Nearly all of those are among the unvaccinated in what many covid-19 experts are dubbing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
Local epidemiologists have continued to stress that “vaccinations are our best line of defense from the pandemic”.
