Sun. 4/19: COVID-19 Daily Update
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
Tourists using transient rentals to bypass Hawaii quarantine restrictions prove hard to track (Star Advertiser, April 19, 2020)
Crackdowns on transient vacation rentals, which aren’t considered essential businesses right now, are difficult to enforce. It’s suspected that many of the 2,970 visitors who arrived in Hawaii over the past 23 days stayed in transient vacation rentals.
Local 5 has been fighting against the rise of illegal vacation rentals for several years for various reasons, like its impact on affordable housing and good hotel jobs. Another key issue we flagged is that vacation rentals and their guests are hard to monitor during emergency situations like hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and now COVID-19.
Hawaii officials brace for ‘big surge’ of newly homeless from coronavirus shutdowns (Star Advertiser, April 19, 2020)
With nearly 250,000 people unemployed in Hawaii due to COVID-19, officials are worried that many of them will become homeless. People who become newly homeless “won’t meet the requirements for some of our current programs because they won’t be deemed as chronically homeless,” said Laura Thielen, Executive Director of Partners in Care.
Hawaiian Airlines to transport 2 million face masks to Hawaii (Hawaii News Now, April 19, 2020)
Hawaiian Airlines chartered a cargo flight to China, which will bring 2 million face masks back to the islands. The effort is in partnership with the grassroots community group Every1ne Hawaii. More than 2 million face masks will be transported to nonprofits around Honolulu.
World: Cases: Cases: 2.4M (+80k). Deaths: 165k (+5k)
USA: Cases: 758k (+24k). Deaths: 40.6 (+1.7k). Total Tested: 3.8M (+100k)
Hawaii: Cases: 580 (+6). Deaths: 10 (+1). Hospitalized: 52 (+1). Recovered: 414 (+4)
