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Hawaii reports 1 additional coronavirus-related death and 89 new infections

CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM
                                Health care worker Leanne Jones prepares to administer a COVID-19 test during drive-thru testing at Wahiawa Health on Sunday.
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CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM

Health care worker Leanne Jones prepares to administer a COVID-19 test during drive-thru testing at Wahiawa Health on Sunday.

Hawaii health officials today reported one additional coronavirus-related death on Oahu and 89 new infections statewide, bringing the totals since the start of the pandemic to 269 fatalities and 18,951 cases.

The fatality was a man in his 50s who had underlying health conditions and died at home, officials said this afternoon.

The official state Department of Health coronavirus-related death toll includes 206 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 is more than 293,000 today as infection cases surpassed 15.7 million.

Today’s new infection cases in Hawaii include 57 on Oahu, 19 on Maui, three on the Big Island, two on Kauai, and eight Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state, according to the Health Department. As a result of update information, one case on Maui and another on Oahu were removed from the counts, officials said.

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

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Health officials counted 4,781 COVID-19 new test results, for a 1.9% statewide positivity rate.

The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 16,059 on Oahu, 1,691 in Hawaii County, 662 on Maui, 125 on Kauai, 106 on Lanai, and 22 on Molokai. There are also 286 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.

Hawaii health officials said that of the state’s total infection count, 1,171 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 fell by four today.

By island, Oahu has 892 active cases, Maui has 142, the Big Island has 117, Kauai has 15 and Molokai has five, according to the latest tally.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,357 have required hospitalizations, with three new hospitalizations on Oahu reported today by state health officials.

Three hospitalizations in the statewide count are Hawaii residents who were diagnosed and treated outside the state. Of the 1,354 hospitalizations within the state, 1,194 have been on Oahu, 80 on the Big Island, 67 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 48 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of noon Thursday, with 19 in intensive care units and 14 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 must be below 2.5% on those two Wednesdays.

Today’s seven-day average case count for Oahu is 64 and the positivity rate was 1.9%, according to Caldwell.

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