Hawaii reports 57 new coronavirus infections as statewide total grows to 19,480

Hawaii health officials today reported 57 new coronavirus infections statewide, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 19,480 cases.

The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll remains 274 with no new deaths were reported today.

The official state Department of Health coronavirus-related death toll includes 211 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 surpassed 300,000 Monday with infection cases topping 16 million.

Today’s new statewide infection cases reported by the Health Department include 35 on Oahu, 10 on the Big Island, eight on Maui, and four Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state. As a result of updated information, one Maui case was removed from the counts, officials said.

The statistics released today reflect the new cases reported to the department through 11:59 p.m. Sunday. The new infections cases reported from Sundays are often the lowest of the week due to reduced testing result data.

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Health officials counted 3,206 COVID-19 new test results, for a 1.8% statewide positivity rate.

The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 16,458 on Oahu, 1,743 in Hawaii County, 714 on Maui, 134 on Kauai, 106 on Lanai, and 22 on Molokai. There are also 303 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.

Hawaii health officials said that of the state’s total infection count, 1,435 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 rose by 10 today.

By island, Oahu has 1,102 active cases, Maui has 169, Big Island has 139, Kauai has 21, and Molokai has four, according to the latest tally.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,374 have required hospitalizations, with seven 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 1,371 hospitalizations within the state, 1,209 have been on Oahu, 82 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 57 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of noon Monday, with 17 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 83 and the positivity rate is 3%, according to Caldwell.

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