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GEORGE F. LEE / OCT. 30
Masked afternoon commuters wait for their buses at the King Street bus stop near Punchbowl Street. Masks are mandatory for all bus riders.
Hawaii health officials reported 97 new coronavirus infections statewide today, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 16,302 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 more than 242,000 today.
Today’s new infection cases in Hawaii include 72 on Oahu, 15 on the Big Island, six on Maui, one on Kauai, and three Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state, according to the Health Department.
Department officials said today’s new statewide new case count came from 4,862 COVID-19 tests, for a 2% statewide positivity rate.
Today’s total coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 14,080 on Oahu, 1,451 in Hawaii County, 442 on Maui, 106 on Lanai, 75 on Kauai, and 17 on Molokai. There are also 131 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.
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Hawaii health officials said that of the state’s total infection count, 1,397 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 21 more active cases reported today.
The Health Department says the number of active cases by island include: 1,072 on Oahu, 205 on the Big Island, 38 on Maui, 12 on Kauai, and nine on Lanai, plus 61 of the residents diagnosed outside the state.
Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,187 have required hospitalizations, with two new hospitalizations — one each on Kauai and the Big Island — 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 1,185 hospitalizations within the state, 1,048 have been on Oahu, 70 on the Big Island, 58 on Maui, five on Kauai, three on Lanai, and one on Molokai.
According to the latest data from the 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. The mayor’s office says 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 82 and the positivity rate was 3.0%, according to the mayor.
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