The Push to Online Community at Hawaii

COVID-19, the worldwide outbreak disease of the 21st century. Hawaii a famous tourist site that is also be affected. On February 21, 2020, Hawaii got the first report of contact with COVID19 from a visitor in Japan who tested positive after a trip staying in Hawaii. Then on March 6, 2020, Hawaii have its first COVID case. Which Hawaii government started taking major action, passing issues of reducing close social contact and lockdown of high social contact areas.

Till now, the Hawaii government and community still maintaining, tracking, and helping Hawaii people to fight off the COVID-19.

With the coronavirus government-issued lockdown, most of the Hawaii community is forced to be online. In the field of education, workforce, and food service, it has the biggest change of all.

During the spring break (March 16) of 2020, the Hawaii Department of Education announced that Hawaii state schools would extend spring break for one week. However, with the rising of COVID cases, the extension was extended, until April 17, 2020, the Hawaii Department of Education closed schools for the remainder of the academic year of spring 2020. During the school year of 2020-2021, public schools would begin the school year with four weeks of distance (online) learning. After the end of the academic year of spring 2020, higher education deploys most courses to online learning.

March 22, 2020, Hawaii passed the stay-at-home/work-from-home orders beginning on March 23 and March 25 lasting until April 30, 2020, and all businesses except for those deemed essential are ordered closed along with city parks and beaches. At the beginning of May, all public businesses were reopened, but on August 25, 2020, a second stay-at-home/work-from-home order was passed, beginning effective August 27 until September 24.

With stay-at-home/work-from-home orders and lockdown, all restaurants were closed and even it reopen the in-person restaurant spend was low. Food delivery services were rising during the lockdown. Also, the Hawaii government helps and supports the food delivery services to help the people who stay at home.

When people started to stay-at-home/work-from-home, their social interaction shifted from physical to virtual. Like social meetings to video conferences and physical contact sharing information to send emails. Also with the lockdown/closing of business, the delivery services replace the normal way of shopping in the Hawaii economy. In-store shopping shifted to online shopping and package delivery, and restaurants spend become Foodapp delivery.

After the release of the covid vaccine, people are returning to their real-life community and workforce. However, the rising activities in social media, video conferences, online shopping, and food-app are major changing points in the Hawaii community and economy. The shifting to the online community opens up a new field of work/thing for the government, business, and citizens to explore.