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Hawaii health officials report another 5 coronavirus-related deaths and 133 new infections

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM
                                Kahu Malama nurse Janice Pedro, right, gives instructions on self-administering a COVID-19 test during the final day of the city’s COVID-19 surge testing at the Neal S. Blaisdell Concert Hall.
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JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM

Kahu Malama nurse Janice Pedro, right, gives instructions on self-administering a COVID-19 test during the final day of the city’s COVID-19 surge testing at the Neal S. Blaisdell Concert Hall.

Hawaii health officials today reported five additional coronavirus-related deaths and 133 new infections statewide, bringing the totals since the start of the pandemic to 261 fatalities and 18,423 cases.

No further information was immediately available regarding the latest fatalities — two on Hawaii island and three on Oahu.

The official state Department of Health coronavirus-related death toll includes 198 fatalities on Oahu, 43 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 remained 49; state health officials have yet to verify coronavirus as a factor in six of those deaths.

The U.S. coronavirus death toll was more than 280,000 today.

Today’s new infection cases in Hawaii include 82 on Oahu, 22 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state, 15 on Maui, 13 on the Big Island, and one on Molokai, according to the Health Department.

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

Health officials counted 8,421 COVID-19 new test results, for a 1.58% statewide positivity rate.

The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 15,695 on Oahu, 1,636 in Hawaii County, 594 on Maui, 119 on Kauai, 106 on Lanai, and 19 on Molokai. There are also 254 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.

Hawaii health officials said that of the state’s total infection count, 1,258 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 the state decreased by 42 today.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,326 have required hospitalizations, with one new hospitalization 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 1,324 hospitalizations within the state, 1,165 have been on Oahu, 80 on the Big Island, 66 on Maui, seven 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 Friday, with 14 in intensive care units and 17 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 68 and the positivity rate was 2.3%, according to Caldwell.


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


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