Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell is holding out hope that Oahu can move into Tier 3 by Thanksgiving, allowing 10 people to gather, up from five currently allowed under Tier 2.

“We know the virus doesn’t take a break. We see that happening in almost every state around the country and now in the state of Hawaii,” Caldwell said Monday at a news conference. “Neither should we take a break. We need to do more; we need to dig deep.”

The mayor said he had hoped Oahu could move to the next phase of reopening the economy on Nov. 18, the earliest date the county could have advanced to Tier 3. That’s not going to happen because the number of new cases on Oahu in the past couple of weeks has been too high.

Moving to Tier 3 on Thanksgiving will only happen if in the next two weeks the number of new cases drops dramatically.

The city takes a “Weekly Assessment” of two key COVID-19 numbers each Wednesday. To move to Tier 3 from Tier 2 on Thanksgiving, the seven-day average of new cases must be below 50 on the last two Wednesdays of this month: Nov. 18 and 25. Also, the seven-day average positivity rate, or percentage of tests coming back positive, must be below 2.5% on those two Wednesdays.

Caldwell is asking everyone in the county to wear masks, practice social distancing and wash hands frequently to keep the numbers down.

“It’s not just huge large gatherings, they’re smaller ones where we think we’re safe because we know each other, but we know this virus spreads so easily,” he said, adding that “more Americans are dying every day.”

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced Monday that its COVID-19 vaccine may be 90% effective at preventing the virus, and said it planned to apply this month for emergency-use approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But it is unclear how long a vaccine would take to reach Hawaii.

“We can’t forgo the important work that needs to be done between now and when a vaccine is widely distributed to the people of the island of Oahu, and that is some time down the road,” Caldwell said.

Health officials reported 64 new coronavirus infections statewide Monday — including 53 on Oahu — bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 16,010 cases.

The official state COVID- 19 death toll remains at 221; however, health officials have yet to verify the disease as a factor in 17 Hawaii island deaths. U.S. deaths from the virus have grown to nearly 238,000, and the country’s number of infections has topped 10 million since the start of the pandemic.

The 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.

Oahu moved to the less restrictive Tier 2 of Oahu’s four-tier economic recovery plan Oct. 22. Caldwell said he hopes to avoid a large surge in cases that could lead to another shutdown of the economy.

“I hope and I pray that we’ll never be returning to another complete shutdown,” which happened twice on Oahu, Caldwell said. “If we saw again a return to 350 cases or 400, 500 cases or more, if we saw the ICU rooms filling up, if we saw sick people in hallways of hospitals, it’d be hard not to consider seriously moving into another stay-at-home and work-at-home order. My hope … is to never have to go there again.”