reduced by only 36 through a single preflight test but a twotest system coupled with a short quarantine period catches a much higher rate in excess of 70 of infected travelers according to the studylee altenberg an adjunct full professor in the mathematics department at the university of hawaii wrote that the paper is one of very few studies available to inform policy makers in hawaiibut he said the research was mischaracterized as proof that hawaiis singletest system was highly effective at preventing spread state officials said the study proved their singletest system would catch 88 of all infected travelersthe public had the wrong impression about how much protection we were getting from the safe travels pretest program and you cant make good policy if you dont have accurate information altenberg saidwe need to get absolutely serious about our travel protocols altenberg added and if were laboring under the misimpression that safe travels is preventing 90 of infections were not going to get serious about those protocolsaltenberg submitted contributions to the lancet study last weekthe authors of the study said that the 88 figure represents the percentage of contagious people that would be detected on the day of travel not the overall reduction of risk to a destination populationthe difference between infected and infectious is important said one of the studys coauthorsthere obviously are people that will develop an infection but are not yet infectious said dr nathan lo faculty fellow in infectious diseases at the university of california san francisco and those people will not be detected necessarilygov david ige did not respond to an interview request but the state did announce monday that 1 million free rapid tests are being provided for routine testing of oahu residentslt gov josh green told the associated press that decisions about testing are ultimately up to the governor but noted that hawaiis single test policy is more than other states in the us have done helping keep the islands safeif the mayors want to do additional testing i absolutely support that green said offering voluntary takehome antigen tests upon arrival for vaccinated and unvaccinated travelers could offer additional protection given the delta variants highly infectious naturegreen said only alaska had implemented a similar system among us states alaska is also dealing with a record surge of new infections and hospitalizationsweve done more than everyone else weve done a better job than everyone else green saiddr mathew kiang an epidemiologist and professor at stanford university was the lead author on the lancet study he worries about the lack of routine travel testing as well as socalled breakthrough infections for those who are vaccinated experts say the shots help reduce the severity of the illness but people who get infected could spread it to otherstheres a lot we still arent quite sure about for breakthrough infections especially in terms of asymptomatic spread kiang said but we know delta is one of many variants of concern and this is going to keep evolving