While visitors are returning to Hawaii, it is a challenging time to travel.
112 thoughts on “Some States Say Don’t Go + New Hawaii Testing Includes Costco”
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Home » Blog » Hawaii Travel Tips » Some States Say Don’t Go + New Hawaii Testing Includes Costco
WOW! It only took three hours after my second inquiry to the Governor’s Office for me to get a response from the Hawaii Safe Travels Team. I had questioned a situation where a participant on this site was so excited about having received her test results in minutes and directed everyone to go to the “red dot” on the Walgreen’s site to choose a test. The “test with the red dot” is a POC Test which Walgreen’s states is an NAAT test. It may be an NAAT test but as you will see below, it is not sufficient for exemption from quarantine in Hawaii. Tempting but not sufficient!!!
Please inform the Walgreen’s point-of-care (POC) testing center that you require the NAAT (nucleic acid amplification test) or the equivalent PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test for qualitative detection of nucleic acid from the SARS-CoV-2.
A RAPID ANTIGEN TEST WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED FOR QUARANTINE EXEMPTION IN THE PRE-TRAVEL TESTING PROGRAM.
We hope this offers appropriate clarification.
Mahalo,
Safe Travels Team
As I have said in the past, BOH, thank you for not censoring this forum, and allowing diverse opinions. I would not tell others what they should be posting, ask them to stop posting or demand they be censored, or not be allowed to post. That’s why I felt it was especially inappropriate for another subscriber to post a duplicate response to me and Tracie stating we have no business posting “political rants” on BOH. The title of this thread is “Some States Say Don’t Go” and politicians are making arbitrary rules that they don’t obey. If this is the deadly plague, why would politicians have a convention in Hawaii? Why would Governor Newsom send his four kids to school and go out to a dinner party? No wonder we are all at each other’s throats. Please continue to maintain an open forum and hopefully Hawaiians and visitors can truly be free again soon. I enjoy your website and I would really love to see more stories like the one you did about businesses that have closed and the loss of jobs in Hawaii. Aloha
Hi Rob.
Thank you. We try our best to maintain some sense of appropriate decorum.
Aloha.
Thank you for your good reporting. We come here to get the bare bone news on travel to Hawaii. I would like to remind all readers that it is possible to agree to disagree with others. We are all of different opinions and deserve to have our say. Resorting to nastiness or putting people down is a reflection of the writer. The goal is to put us at odds with each other – divide and conquer. Don’t fall into that trap. We need to put aside the fear that puts us in opposite corners fighting. Maybe time to stop with this red or blue and look at what is just and good for America. Fraudulent elections cannot exist in a Democratic Society. Period. Freedoms must be preserved. We all need to fight for our freedoms or they will be lost forever. Mahalo for listening.
Hi Nancy.
Thank you. And happy travels to Hawaii.
Aloha.
At this time, you cannot use Costco/AZOVA in Nevada, Maryland and Pennsylvania. But what’s so weird about that restriction is that the Costco website states “Currently you cannot take this test if you are physically in Nevada, Maryland, or Pennsylvania when you take the test.”
“When you take the test.” It doesn’t say anything about to where they can or cannot ship a test. So, to echo David B’s comment below – how the heck does the Zoom call know where you are when they are watching you test!?!?!
If you go into the Vault website and try to order a kit, about 5 screens in it will ask you what state you live in and it was then that it said they do not test in NM. So check for your state before you make any assumptions as to Vault being the best way to go.
People have been commenting on “to mask” or “not to mask” on the beaches. This is a quote from the Governor’s Proclamation 11/16/20, Exhibit J, regarding masks and is under the subsection regarding “Exemptions” to having to wear a mask. The Proclamation states that it applies to ALL the islands and overrules any county rulings.
EXEMPTION J: “While outdoors when physical distance of six (6) feet from other individuals (who are not members of the same household/living unit/residence) can be maintained at all times;”
So it’s interesting that some folks have stated that friends have been cited. Unless they were within 6 feet of another family unit, this appears to say they should not have been cited.
The mayor of Kauai stated yesterday he has sent emergency rules to the Governor again asking for visitors to quarrantine for 72hrs then take a second test before allowed to do anything. Do you know any more about this?
Thank you
Hi Lynde.
Thanks. We just did an article about that subject.
Aloha.
After getting excited about HA offering Covid tests with Vault using HA Rewards Points, we discovered that Vault doesn’t offer testing in New Mexico.
Be careful and check in advance if Vault tests in your state!!! Glad we came across that unexpected piece of info.
AND Costco/AZOVA doesn’t test in three states – Nevada, Maryland and one other that I can’t remember.
Do you mean Vault wont ship test kits to New Mexico? Nothing about that on their web site. Because you can take the test anywhere there is an internet connection for a zoom call. There is no way for the Vault test “supervisor” to know your location. We had our test kits sent to our Wyoming home back in October. Then we shipped them to a son who lives in California, because we weren’t checking luggage and they have fluid in them. We picked them up from the son and took the spit tests in our hotel room in California a few days before flying out to Hawaii. All that mattered was having a UPS store nearby (was one right next to our hotel).
By the way, I just saw that Vault lowered its price from $150 to $119 per test kit.
David B… Rethinking my response to your post…
You comments have no logic. All Vault cares about it that they are licensed in the state to which they send the kit! You are correct… They have no idea where you are when you take the test but they DO care about being able to having sent a kit to a state where they are legally licensed. Your comment about having the kit sent to your residence but then taking the test somewhere else led me down the wrong path. That comment was irrelevant to the issue. However, my comment still stands – at this point in time I cannot use Vault in New Mexico.
And you cannot use Costco/AZOVA in Nevada, Maryland and Pennsylvania. But what’s so weird about that restriction is that it says “Currently you cannot take this test if you are physically in Nevada, Maryland, or Pennsylvania when you take the test.” “When you take the test.” It doesn’t say anything about to where they can ship a test.
If you go into the Vault website and try to order a kit, about 5 screens in it will ask you what state you live in and it was then that it said they do not test in NM.
Hello BOH readers-I’m wondering if anyone has had experience with making a Walgreens appointment as soon as the next day goes live. I’m trying to make appointments for 5 people and Walgreens only posting 3 days in advance makes that challenging. Do I need to go on line at midnight? When Walgreens opens in my area? Any experience is appreciated! Thank you!!
After experiencing that phenomenon, we discovered that “unavailability” was because Walgreen’s doesn’t test at all in our area!!!
Aloha BOH
From you can’t make this stuff up.
Currently there’s a conference going on at the Maui Fairmont attended by State of California legislators. Here they’re discouraging travel to Hawaii, yet there they are enjoying Maui.
To be fair both Democratic and Republican law makers are attending this conference.
Another example of the rules don’t apply to politicians.
Hi Richard.
That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing, and for your more than 70 comments.
Aloha.
Jared X
Governor Newsom is a complete hypocrite. He lives in an 8 acre compound with pools and tennis courts while issuing shelter in place orders for the rest of us. His kids are going to private school right now while most public schools are closed. He goes out to eat with twelve others without masks while ordering us to eat Thanksgiving outside. He is a tyrant and is destroying the California economy. The reason Hawaiians should care is California tourists will never return to Hawaii if the economy continues to spiral down.
This is not the place for a political rant. This is a site where folks can comment on traveling to Hawaii and that is all it should be!
Hi Barbara M.
The title of the article is “Some states say don’t go to Hawaii”, in
California these rules are being made by Gov Newsom alone. It is relevant to discuss him and his do as I say not as I do lifestyle. The LA times published an editorial yesterday noting that California is on the brink of economic collapse. Newsom is advising travelers to quarantine 14 days when they return from Hawaii vacation. You have posted 10 times I think others are entitled to add to the discussion also. If the economy is destroyed we will all be in the same boat.
Rob T… Not sure what you mean by I’ve “posted 10 times”? To this article? Otherwise, I’ve posted nearly 100 times so guess you’ve missed me at my best. In my state, we’ve had to quarantine for 14 days after being out of state for the last few months so that concept is nothing new to me!
Hi Barbara M.
You are now up to 16 posts out of 82 in this thread, 20%! Maybe you should start your own Hawaii website for the dozens who travel daily from New Mexico to Hawaii. Can’t you understand that a 14 day quarantine for Californians makes it almost impossible for working people to travel to and from Hawaii if they only have one or two weeks of vacation time? Like it or not all the closures of Hawaii and other states have been political, and the title of this thread is ‘Some States say don’t go”.
Rob T… Disrespect is not part of this website. Your snarky comment about my not understanding how a 14 day quarantine will affect Californians is parochial! A 14 day quarantine will affect anyone from any state whose vacation time is limited. It doesn’t matter whether you’re from CA or NM. Many states have had the 14 quarantine in place for quite a while – California is just catching up. And does it impact folks – you bet it does! And BTW, the quantity of my posts is the jurisdiction of ONLY those who own this site – not of participants!
Governor Hair Gel is counting on big huge bailout from the Harris Administration. He could care less about the economic and mental havoc he wreaks in the meantime. He would shut down flights to/from Hawaii, if he could. His actions are very much relevant to this Hawaii travel blog, as a great number of people travel between Hawaii and California.
Our mainland home is in Western Wyoming, but we do all of our shopping in Eastern Idaho, just over the border. When all the lockdowns happened in March-April, the Idaho governor “required” a 14 day quarantine for anyone that entered the state. Maybe he expected us to stay in our car in the parking lot for a couple of weeks every time we went shopping?
OK, so let me get this straight … you are commenting on the governor of California’s recommendation that people not travel right now, and you don’t even live in CA?!? Please, let’s stick to the topic, which is the fact that a number of governors and other public health officials are saying that now is not a good time to travel since COVID is running rampant all over the US. Now is the time to hunker down, stay home, and when you leave your house wear a mask and social distance. That’s the recommendations from the scientists and public health experts and Govoner Newsome is just repeating that advice. It’s advice intended to help slow down the spread of this virus until we can get a vaccine distributed to everyone. You realize that we are losing over 1,00 people every day now to COVID in this country and we really need to try and slow things down.
Joerg… Well said!!!