Honolulu County (Oahu) will be implementing a vaccine passport type thing for restaurants, bars, gyms, and other places where people are frequently sharing breath with others unmasked, beginning September 13th.

Those businesses will be requiring their patrons and employees to show proof of vaccination (or a negative test result from within the past 48 hours) for anyone inside the business for more than 15 minutes. (So takeouts and deliveries are exempt from having to show proof.)

Visitors and residents who are unvaccinated are urged to utilize the businesses in ways that they do not interact with vaccinated folks, so get take out instead of dining in, etc.

Children under 12, since they do not qualify for the vaccine yet, are exempt... So families can dine (etc.) if all in the party are vaccinated who are over 12. Screaming toddlers and babies can still accompany them.

In my opinion, I would still not bring unvaccinated kids into crowded areas anyway, so hopefully parents will use their best judgment.

The new rule will only be in effect for 2 months and then it will be re-visited. For the unvaccinated, they can stay out of the restaurants and other super spreader events for those 2 months and perhaps we can bring our numbers down so that we can again begin welcoming tourists.

My island (Kauai) does not have such a mandate (yet anyway) but we will see if it's effective on Oahu first before possibly initiating something like that on our islands.

Many of our cluster cases have stemmed from restaurants frequented by anti-vaxxers. So, they'd better up their safety protocols until then, if they want to keep their businesses open to their unvaccinated clients without requiring testing.

How long have you had that cough?