Hawaii reports 64 new coronavirus infections statewide

Hawaii health officials reported 64 new coronavirus infections statewide today, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 16,010 cases.

The official state Department of Health coronavirus-related death toll remains 221, 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 nearly 238,000, and the country’s number of infections today topped 10 million since the start of the pandemic.

Today’s new infection cases in Hawaii include 53 on Oahu, four on the Big Island, two on Kauai, and five Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state, according to the health department. As a result of updated information, one previous infection case from Oahu was removed from the state’s tally.

The department’s daily infection tally is often lower on Mondays than the rest of the week due to a smaller number of test results being counted over the weekend.

Health Department officials said today’s new infection count came from just over 2,500 COVID-19 tests for a 2.3% statewide positivity rate.

Today’s total coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 13,862 on Oahu, 1,409 in Hawaii County, 425 on Maui, 106 on Lanai, 73 on Kauai, and 17 on Molokai. There are also 118 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.

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Hawaii health officials said today 1,306 infections are currently considered active cases statewide. Health officials have 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. There were 26 additional active cases reported today.

The Health Department says the number of active cases by county include: 1,001 on Oahu, 179 on the Big Island, 28 on Lanai, 24 on Maui, 12 on Kauai and 62 of the diagnosed residents outside the state.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,160 have required hospitalizations, with no 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 1,160 hospitalizations within the state, 1,024 have been on Oahu, 68 on the Big Island, 58 on Maui, four on Kauai, three on Lanai, and one on Molokai. One Oahu hospitalization was also removed from the island’s total.

According to the latest data from the Health Department’s Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard, a total of 75 patients with COVID-19 are in Hawaii hospitals, with 13 in intensive care units and eight 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 at least four weeks. To move to Tier 3, 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. Today’s seven-day average case count is 88 and the positivity rate was 3.2% for Oahu, according to the mayor.

This breaking news story will be updated as more information becomes available.