Uhuh. Hawaii, an entire US state that is "a bunch of islands in the middle of nowhere" and yet somehow didn't eliminate the virus has far fewer people than New Zealand.
Hawaii is still allowing tourism from the USA, I assume NZ is not allowing similar tourism. They could have locked down harder (being an island and all) but didn't probably because their economy isn't as independent as NZ's is.
Cases have been skyrocketing in Hawaii over the last month, though, especially on the outlying islands. Before July, the highest daily case count the Big Island had ever had was ~30. Now the 7-day average is 125, or 60/100k.
Given the health care resources available anywhere but in Honolulu, things won't be pretty if it keeps climbing.
Western Australia is also a state and we've regularly locked down all travel from other Australian states when they have community outbreaks. We have a COVID death rate lower than New Zealand and, like NZ, have lived essentially normally throughout COVID despite the travel restrictions.
Currently you can only come here from NSW with express permission and then you have to quarantine at your own expense for 2 weeks. Quarantine requirements kick-in whenever there's a community outbreak in other states/territories and the restrictions ramp up as case numbers grow.
It is easy for Western Australia and Tasmania to isolate because the former has a vast desert between here and the east coast and the latter is an island without an international airport (probably one of the safer spots on Earth). There's no physical reason Hawaii and Alaska couldn't have done the same, but it's probably not politically or socially acceptable.
Atlantic Canada locked travel from out of region down almost completely ... as a result Nova Scotia, PEI and Newfoundland have had the lowest rates (per capita) of COVID in North America:
No. There have been plenty of people traveling in and out of Hawaii all along. There were some quarantine/testing requirements at various times. But certainly not closed borders. I even looked of going there at one point but, when I looked, hotels were quite expensive.
