Hawaii reports 122 new coronavirus cases, bringing statewide total to 15,691
GEORGE F. LEE / NOV. 5
John Witeck, center, and Jimmy Aglubub of Hawaii Workers Center rallied Thursday at the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations building on Punchbowl Street to protest the non-payment of unemployment benefits and lack of support from the state agency. Many Hawaii workers have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Hawaii health officials reported 122 new coronavirus infections statewide today, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 15,691 cases.
No additional deaths were reported today.
The official state Department of Health death toll remains 219, with 170 fatalities on Oahu, 31 on Hawaii island, 17 on Maui, and one Kauai resident who died on the mainland. The Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency says that the Big Island’s COVID-19 death toll is 48, however, state health officials now have yet to verify coronavirus as a factor in 17 of those deaths.
The U.S. coronavirus death toll is over 235,000 today.
Today’s new infection cases in Hawaii include 87 on Oahu, 21 on the Big Island, six on Maui, six Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of Hawaii, one case each on Kauai, and Lanai, according to the health department. As a result of updated information, one case from Oahu and two cases from Hawaii island were removed from the tally. Meanwhile, Kauai District Health Office today reported two new cases, bringing the county’s total active cases to nine.
Today’s total coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 13,596 on Oahu, 1,375 in Hawaii County, 421 on Maui, 106 on Lanai, 69 on Kauai, and 17 on Molokai. There are also 107 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.
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Hawaii health officials said today 1,234 infections are currently considered active cases statewide. The number of active cases is much lower than the 3,296 active infections reported on Wednesday. Health officials today replaced the “released from isolation” statistic, which had been used to calculate the number of active cases, with “cases in the past 14 days.” They said this new classification serves as a “proxy number for active cases” and is based on infections reported in the past 14 days. Officials said the change “resolves classification issues for cases unable to be reached or who are out of jurisdiction, for whom precise release from isolation date may not be possible to determine. It is also not influenced by lags in data entry.”
Health Department officials said they counted 112 positive tests out of 3,961 new COVID-19 tests in today’s infection case tally for a 2.8% statewide positivity rate.
Of all the confirmed Hawaii cases, 1,147 have required hospitalizations, with nine new hospitalizations reported today by state health officials.
Two hospitalizations in the statewide count are Hawaii residents who were diagnosed and treated outside the state. Of the 1,145 hospitalizations within the state, 1,014 have been on Oahu, 67 on the Big Island, 57 on Maui, three on Kauai, three on Lanai, and one on Molokai.
According to the latest data from the Health Department’s Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard, a total of 69 patients with COVID-19 are in Hawaii hospitals, with 13 in intensive care units and nine on ventilators.
Oahu moved to the less-restrictive Tier 2 of Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s four-tier economic recovery plan on Oct. 22, and must stay in that tier for four weeks. To move to Tier 3 no earlier than Nov. 19, Oahu must maintain a seven-day average case count of 49 or fewer cases, and a seven-day average positivity rate of 2.49% or lower for 14 consecutive days at the end of the four-week period. Today’s seven-day average case count is 73 and the positivity rate was 3.0% for Oahu.
This breaking news story will be updated as more information becomes available.
