Hawaii sees 118 new coronavirus infections bringing total cases to 16,205

Hawaii health officials reported 118 new coronavirusinfections statewide today, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 16,205 cases.

The official state Department of Health coronavirus-related death toll remains unchanged at 222, and includes 173 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 have yet to verify coronavirus as a factor in 17 of those deaths.

The U.S. coronavirus death toll is nearly 241,000 today.

Today’s new infection cases in Hawaii include 85 on Oahu, 23 on the Big Island, six on Maui, three on Kauai, and one Hawaii resident 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.

Health Department officials said today’s new statewide new case count came from 5,223 COVID-19 tests, for a 2.3% statewide positivity rate.

Today’s total coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 14,008 on Oahu, 1,436 in Hawaii County, 436 on Maui, 106 on Lanai, 74 on Kauai, and 17 on Molokai. There are also 128 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.

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Hawaii health officials said that of the state’s total infection count, 1,376 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 57 additional active cases reported today.

The Health Department says the number of active cases by county include: 1,060 on Oahu, 197 on the Big Island, 32 on Maui, 11 on Lanai, and 12 on Kauai, plus 69 of the residents diagnosed outside the state.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,185 have required hospitalizations, with five new hospitalizations on Oahu 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 1,183 hospitalizations within the state, 1,048 have been on Oahu, 69 on the Big Island, 58 on Maui, four 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 77 patients with COVID-19 were in Hawaii hospitals as of Tuesday, with 16 in intensive care units and one on a ventilator.

Oahu moved to the less-restrictive Tier 2 of Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s four-tier economic recovery plan on Oct. 22. On Monday, the mayor’s office clarified that 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, or percentage of tests coming back positive, must be below 2.5% on those two Wednesdays.

Today’s seven-day average case count for Oahu is 85 and the positivity rate was 3.1%, according to the mayor.