Lawmakers push health department to do more to keep communities, schools safe

Several state senators Friday raised issues and concerns to Hawaii Department of Health Director Dr. Libby Char over what more the state can do to support schools as COVID-19 cases remain at all-time highs and school clusters have been acknowledged for the first time this school year.

During a Senate COVID-19 Committee hearing, Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz cited Hawaii Revised Statute §321-1 when pointing out that the department has the authority to do more to keep our communities, and our schools, safe.

3. The department shall have authority in matters of quarantine and other health matters and may declare and enforce quarantine when none exists and modify or release quarantine when it is established.
4. When it is determined that there is imminent danger of epidemic or serious outbreak of communicable disease, the department may refuse, modify, or limit attendance at any school in the State.
5. When in the judgment of the director, there is deemed to be a potential health hazard, the department may take precautionary measures to protect the public through the imposition of an embargo, the detention of products regulated by the department, the removal of products regulated by the department from the market, the declaration of quarantine, or by sequestering items suspected to be contaminated by toxic or infectious substances; provided that the director shall find evidence of a health hazard within seven days of the action taken or rescind the action. The director shall make public the findings.
6. All county health authorities, sheriffs, police officers, and all other officers and employees of the State, and every county thereof, shall enforce the rules of the department. All such powers in health matters as have been or may be conferred upon any county shall be concurrent with those of the department.

“You might want to review this with the attorney general and see what powers you have to take control of the situation,” Dela Cruz told Char.

Meanwhile, Sen. Michelle Kidani, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, highlighted the contradiction between what Char advises to keep the public safe and healthy, and what’s happening in schools. “All of our elementary students are under 12 and cannot be vaccinated yet. Most of them have to sit very close, shoulder to shoulder, in classrooms and on the school buses,” Kidani said.

“There wasn’t enough conversation when the previous superintendent basically said every student will go back to school and there will be no distance learning,” Kidani continued. “It wasn’t until (the) July 15 Board of Education meeting that that chair (Catherine Payne) said yes, we will have some distance learning. But by that time, some schools had already started, and the regular opening school was only two weeks away, which was not enough time to have the teachers in place, and that’s what we’re facing now. And that doesn’t mean that parents, knowing that they have possible COVID cases, are not sending their kids to school anyway.”

The discussion came on the same day the health department acknowledged for the first time the existence of COVID-19 clusters in public schools.