O‘ahu’s Stay-at-Home Work-from-Home Order is Extended to Sept. 24

https://www.facebook.com/MayorKirk/videos/631252617579941/

By Wendy Osher

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell today announced that the Governor has granted his request to extend his Stay-At-Home/Work-from-Home order for O‘ahu for two more weeks through Sept. 24, 2020.

There are some exceptions pertaining to activities in parks, beaches and hiking trails which will be open for limited solo activity on O‘ahu. “That means individuals can go into the parks to sit down, to read, to meditate, to eat lunch, sit on a beach and get a suntan, go on a hike… run, jog, walk. Community gardens will be open for individual gardening of your plot. All of those things will be allowed,” said Mayor Caldwell.

In order to allow access to these activities on O‘ahu, parking lots will be open for the sole purpose of solo activity.

The Stay-At-Home/Work-from-Home order for O‘ahu was reinstated on Aug. 27 and was supposed to be lifted this Thursday, Sept. 10.  While today’s 66 new COVID-19 cases statewide were a positive indication of progress, they come after 36 consecutive days of triple digit numbers.

Mayor Caldwell said for reopening of businesses, he would like to see the average number of cases go down over a period of seven days to two weeks.

He said nearly $60 million has been expended to assist small businesses in reopening. “One thing we all know…when you don’t have a healthy community, you don’t have a health economy… As the number of cases went up, we saw the number of people sitting in indoor dining drop, because people didn’t feel safe. It’s incumbent that we have people feel safe. By having them feel safe, we have to show them the numbers are down to a controllable number,” said Mayor Caldwell during an afternoon press conference.

In a news briefing today, Governor David Ige said, “We have seen a flattening in the number of new cases … but we are still not where we need to be. I do know that the mandates have been a significant burden on all of us. We have all made sacrifices over the weeks and months since the COVID pandemic started.”

*Video courtesy Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell / Facebook