Hawaii’s Indoor Mask Mandate Is Finally Ending. What Will You Do? … The two-year requirement will expire at midnight Friday, leaving a perplexing patchwork of mask choices and policies for locals and tourists to navigate.
Friday, at the stroke of midnight, Hawaii residents will be among the last in the nation to return to a reality unseen for two years, where air travel is no longer restricted by vaccination status and shoppers won’t need to search their purses and pockets for week-old masks every time they enter a restaurant or store.
Some will strip off their plastic and cloth veils with gusto, cursing the day their faces were ever barred from the ocean breeze. Others will clutch their coverings to their chest, loath to relinquish the last physical barrier against a deadly virus still running rampant.
The end of Hawaii’s blanket indoor mask mandate and the sunset of the state’s Safe Travels program – a vaccine-or-test requirement for airport arrivals hoping to avoid a mandatory quarantine – will close the curtain on the last of the major Covid-19 restrictions, meaning that life for many will return to what it was before the pandemic.
