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Supervised quarantine back on for travelers on next Hawaiian Air flight

Lt. Gov. Talauega Eleasalo V. Ale
fili@samoanews.com

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — As the community surge of COVID-19 continues — now exceeding 1,500 overall positives through Mar. 20 — the COVID-19 Task Force is requiring travelers on the Mar. 31 flight from Honolulu to go through supervised quarantine upon arrival in the territory, Lt. Gov. Talauega Eleasalo Ale said during yesterday’s virtual news conference.

“American Samoa is in the early stages of its omicron [variant] COVID-19 surge” which started on Feb. 21 “when eight people in our community tested positive,” said Talauega in his opening remarks.

He noted that yesterday, Mar. 21, marks the 29th day of the community surge. “So far we have recorded a total of over 1,500 positives but no fatalities,” said the Lt. Governor, who is also the task force chair and the Governor’s Authorized Representative (GAR).

The territory’s lead Epidemiologist, Dr. Aifili J. Tufa with the Health Department gave an update on the COVID-19 count, saying that 55 new positives were recorded at LBJ Medical Center on Mar. 20 — which was a Sunday and DoH stood down its testing and vaccinations that day.

The overall cumulative total since the COVID-19 surge as of Mar. 20, stands at 1,565 positive cases, and 231 individuals have recovered. Furthermore, there are no deaths due to the deadly virus.

Residents were once again urged to get vaccinated and those fully vaccinated to get their booster shot. At the time of the news conference, the vaccination rate had reached 82.3% fully vaccinated — or 40,911 eligible residents of the territory.

One of the advance media questions submitted prior to the news conference was seeking an update on the task force’s final plan for the Mar. 31 HAL flight, for which Talauega had announced last week the proposal was to eliminate supervised quarantine for arriving travelers from Honolulu and release passengers for monitored home-quarantine.

However, Talauega said yesterday that passengers on this flight will be quarantined from anywhere between three to five days. “That’s a new development determined by the task force, given concerns about our surge and the surge of another variant that has reached the shores of the [U.S] mainland,” he explained.

As for COVID-19 testing in Hawaii for this same flight, Talauega said the ASG Medicaid Office will continue to pay for testing under the Medicaid program.

The Medicaid Office had announced that it was discontinuing Medicaid paying for testing in Hawaii as of the Mar. 31 HAL flight.

Talauega said the requirements for the free test remain that the traveler must be a bonafide resident of American Samoa and must provide proof of that in order for Medicaid to pay for the test. 

Samoa News points out that the discontinuation of the test paid for by Medicaid in Honolulu was reiterated during last week’s Health Committee hearing by the head of the local Medicaid Office, Sandra King Young. At the time, the vice chair responded that it was not good news because it would just make things that more expensive for returning residents.

Samoa News will report in tomorrow’s edition on the rest of the issues discussed yesterday.