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Hawaii records 2 additional coronavirus-related deaths and 108 new infections statewide

CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM
                                Guests enjoy the pool at the Sheraton Waikiki on Friday. Tourism in Hawaii has increased in the last weeks since the state began pre-travel testing, but is still well below year-ago levels.
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CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM

Guests enjoy the pool at the Sheraton Waikiki on Friday. Tourism in Hawaii has increased in the last weeks since the state began pre-travel testing, but is still well below year-ago levels.

UPDATE: 3:35 p.m.

Hawaii health officials said the two additional coronavirus-related deaths reported earlier today were an Oahu man in his 70s and a Kauai man in his 80s, both of whom had underlying conditions.

The Kauai death had been reported Tuesday by county officials, but was added to the state Department of Health’s death toll today.

Health officials also said this afternoon that 46 of Oahu’s 93 new COVID-19 infections reported today, or nearly half, are part of the recent cluster at the Waiawa Correctional Facility.

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Hawaii health officials today reported two coronavirus-related deaths and 108 new infections statewide, bringing the totals since the start of the pandemic to 235 fatalities and 17,501 cases.

One death was on Kauai and the other was on Oahu. No further information was immediately released on the latest fatalities, but on Tuesday, Kauai County health officials announced the first on-island COVID-19 death, a man who had no history of travel. (A Kauai resident with the virus also died in July on the mainland.)

The official state Department of Health coronavirus-related death toll includes 183 fatalities on Oahu, 32 on Hawaii island, 17 on Maui, one on Kauai, and two Hawaii residents who died on the mainland. The Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency said Tuesday that the Big Island’s COVID-19 death toll remains at 49, however, state health officials have yet to verify coronavirus as a factor in 17 of those deaths.

The U.S. coronavirus death toll was more than 261,000 today.

Today’s new infection cases in Hawaii include 93 on Oahu, five on Maui, one each on Kauai and the Big Island, and eighth Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state, according to the Health Department.

As a result of updated information, one Big Island infection was re-categorized to an out-of-state case and one out-of-state infection was re-categorized to Maui.

The statistics released today reflect the new cases reported to the department through 11:59 p.m. Monday.

>> RELATED: Key Hawaii testing partner warns travelers to make other plans; Kauai seeks to exit program

Today’s total coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 15,011 on Oahu, 1,558 in Hawaii County, 504 on Maui, 106 on Lanai, 102 on Kauai, and 17 on Molokai. There are also 203 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.

Hawaii health officials said that of the state’s total infection count, 1,340 cases are considered active 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. The total number of active cases rose by 27 today.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,269 have required hospitalizations, with one new hospitalization 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 1,267 hospitalizations within the state, 1,119 have been on Oahu, 75 on the Big Island, 61 on Maui, six on Kauai, five on Lanai, and one on Molokai.

According to the latest data from the department’s Hawaii COVID-19 data dashboard, a total of 67 patients with COVID-19 were in Hawaii hospitals as of noon Tuesday, with 16 in intensive care units and 11 on ventilators.

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 84 and the positivity rate was 2.5%, according to Caldwell.


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


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