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JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM
A Honolulu police officer directs a woman toward testing during the final day of the city’s COVID-19 surge testing on Monday at the Neal S. Blaisdell Concert Hall in Honolulu.
UPDATE: 3:37 p.m.
Hawaii health officials said today the latest Oahu deaths were a woman in her 80s and a man in his 70s, both of whom had been hospitalized with underlying health conditions.
No further details were provided.
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Hawaii health officials today reported two additional coronavirus-related deaths and 144 new infections statewide, bringing the totals since the start of the pandemic to 246 fatalities and 18,186 cases.
No further information was immediately available regarding the two latest deaths on Oahu.
The official state Department of Health coronavirus-related death toll includes 192 fatalities on Oahu, 34 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 today 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 15 of those deaths.
The U.S. coronavirus death toll was more than 275,000 today.
Today’s new infection cases in Hawaii include 118 on Oahu, 14 on Maui, seven on the Big Island, two on Kauai, and three Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state, according to the Health Department. As a result of updated information, two Oahu infections were dropped from the counts.
The statistics released today reflect the new cases reported to the department through 11:59 p.m. Tuesday.
Health officials counted 6,290 COVID-19 new test results, for a 2.28% statewide positivity rate.
The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 15,540 on Oahu, 1,613 in Hawaii County, 565 on Maui, 116 on Kauai, 106 on Lanai, and 18 on Molokai. There are also 228 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.
Hawaii health officials said that of the state’s total infection count, 1,288 cases are considered to be active. Health officials say they consider infections reported in the past 14 days to be a “proxy number for active cases.” The number of active cases in Hawaii fell by 38 today.
Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,315 have required hospitalizations, with 11 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 1,313 hospitalizations within the state, 1,159 have been on Oahu, 79 on the Big Island, 63 on Maui, six on Kauai, five on Lanai, and one on Molokai.
According to the latest information from the department’s Hawaii COVID-19 data dashboard, a total of 57 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of noon Wednesday, with 20 in intensive care units and 15 on ventilators.
Oahu moved to the less-restrictive Tier 2 of Honolulu 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 63 and the positivity rate was 2.2%, according to Caldwell.
This breaking news story will be updated as more information becomes available.
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