Honolulu Mayor Blangiardi is ‘totally against’ the city returning to Level 2, despite the increase in cases

Mayor Rick Blangiardi is “totally against” the city’s reopening plan back to Level 2 as the number of new cases in Honolulu continues to approach the designated two-week average limit of 50 new cases per day.

The city’s current weekly average is 59 new cases per day. According to the tier system, if the weekly average of new cases exceeds 50 for more than two weeks, Honolulu must slide back to Level 2, which allows meetings of up to five people instead of 10 and limits gyms to 25 % of capacity below 50% allowed in Layer 3.

According to the numbers, Honolulu is expected to reach the limit that would take her back to Level 2 on Wednesday. For Oahu to stay below the weekly average of 50 cases per day, it would be necessary to have less than 10 new cases per day in the next two days.

However, Blangiardi explained during a press conference today, that when the tier system was created under Mayor Kirk Caldwell, it was designed with the assumption that vaccines would not be available until the summer or fall of 2021. Instead, the state administered about 675,000 doses of vaccine.

“I think our case counts when they were defined, it was in a very different set of determinations when they built the layers,” he said.

“The layer numbers, when they were built before, could be very low. I asked for modifications for Tier 3, so that there would be 50 to 100 cases, I think we could stay in this positivity rate range around (2.5%). “

Blangiardi has been talking to Governor David Ige about staying at Level 3, but it is unclear how the decision will be made.

Ige said today in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in Hawaii that it would be largely up to Blangiardi to decide whether Honolulu would return to Level 2.

However, at a press conference that day, he pointed to Oahu’s emergency order, which said the city would be called upon to act due to the number of cases. In the order, it is written that Oahu will remain in Layer 3 until May 10, 2021, “unless moving to another layer is previously required by the Honolulu Reopening Structure COVID-19 with an order making that move,” or is replaced in a different order. Ige explained that the city could choose to ignore the current order of cities, but that it should instead modify the tier system to give the city more time to explore its options.

“It may be necessary to modify your order so that it is not automatic,” he said.

“At this point, the order was written so that on Wednesday, based on the number of successive Wednesdays, action was necessary.”

If Blangiardi wanted to modify the tier system, he would have to send a request to the governor’s office, and Ige would need to approve it.

One of Ige’s main concerns is the increase in cases, which could mean that more contagious variants of COVID-19 were being disseminated.

“What often goes unnoticed is that, with these increasing case counts, this offers more opportunities for variants,” said Ige.

Blangiardi agreed that he could not argue against the risk of the variants, but said he was still “speculative” and reminded people that he is not an epidemiologist.

He encouraged people to continue to follow Level 3 rules, wear masks and distance themselves.

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