Hawaii health officials today reported four new coronavirus-related deaths and 132 new infections, bringing the state’s totals since the start of the pandemic to 332 fatalities and 24,870 cases.
No further details were immediately available regarding the latest coronavirus-related deaths on Oahu.
The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll includes 262 fatalities on Oahu, 45 on Hawaii island, 21 on Maui, one on Kauai, and three Hawaii residents who died on the mainland. The Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency said the Big Island’s COVID-19 death toll remained at 51, but state officials have not verified coronavirus as a factor in six of those fatalities. Hawaii County has reported no coronavirus-related deaths in the past three weeks.
The U.S. coronavirus-related death toll was more than 411,000 today.
Today’s new statewide infection cases reported by the Health Department include 98 on Oahu, 19 on Maui, five on the Big Island, one on Kauai, and nine residents diagnosed outside of Hawaii, officials said. As a result of updated information, one case from Oahu was recategorized to Kauai and another Oahu case was removed from the counts.
The statistics released today reflect the new infection cases reported to the department on Wednesday.
The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 20,230 on Oahu, 2,113 in Hawaii County, 1,550 on Maui, 177 on Kauai, 106 on Lanai and 25 on Molokai. There are also 669 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.
Health officials also said today that of the state’s total infection count, 1,838 cases were considered to be active. Officials say they consider infections reported in the past 14 days to be a “proxy number for active cases.” The number of active cases in the state decreased by 115 today.
By island, Oahu has 1,326 active cases, Maui has 354, the Big Island has 139, Kauai has 19, according to the state’s latest tally. Lanai and Molokai have no active COVID cases.
Health officials counted 5,065 new COVID-19 test results in today’s tally, for a 2.61% statewide positivity rate. The state’s 7-day average positivity rate is also 2.4%, according to the Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard.
Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,647 have required hospitalizations, with five new hospitalizations reported today by state health officials.
Four hospitalizations in the statewide count are Hawaii residents who were diagnosed and treated outside the state. Of the 1,643 hospitalizations within the state, 1,441 have been on Oahu, 96 on Maui, 93 on the Big Island, seven on Kauai, five on Lanai and one on Molokai.
According to the latest information from the department’s Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard, a total of 100 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of Thursday morning, with 23 in intensive care units and 21 on ventilators.
Health officials said that as of Sunday, 70,095 vaccines have been administered of the 154,150 received by the state. The vaccinations by county are Honolulu, 39,886; Maui, 10,195; Hawaii, 7,011; and Kauai, 5,328. The total also included 7,675 administered under the federal pharmacy program. State officials release the updated vaccination numbers each Wednesday.
Oahu moved to the less-restrictive Tier 2 of Honolulu’s four-tier economic recovery plan on Oct. 22. To gauge whether Honolulu will move to a different tier, the city takes a “weekly assessment” of two key COVID-19 numbers each Wednesday. To move to Tier 3 from Tier 2, the 7-day average of new cases must be below 50 on two consecutive Wednesdays. Also, the 7-day average positivity rate must be below 2.5% on those two Wednesdays.
Today’s seven-day average case count for Oahu is 77 and the seven-day average positivity rate is 2.9%, according to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi.
Blangiardi said last week he hoped to stay in Tier 2, a four-tiered framework established by former Mayor Kirk Caldwell. Under Tier 3, social gatherings of up to 10 would be allowed, up from 5 under Tier 2, and retail businesses would be able to operate at full capacity, rather than 50% capacity under Tier 2.
This breaking news story will be updated as more information becomes available.