Hawaii records 1 additional coronavirus death on Oahu and 130 new infections statewide

Hawaii health officials today reported one new coronavirus-related death on Oahu and 105 new infections statewide, bringing the totals since the start of the pandemic to 281 deaths and 19,859 cases.

The latest reported fatality was a woman in her 60s who had underlying conditions and had been hospitalized, officials said this afternoon.

The official state Department of Health coronavirus-related death toll includes 217 fatalities on Oahu, 44 on Hawaii island, 17 on Maui, one on Kauai, and two Hawaii residents who died on the mainland.

The U.S. coronavirus death toll was more than 311,000 today with infection cases over 17 million since the start of the pandemic.

Today’s new statewide infection cases reported by the Health Department include 105 on Oahu, 11 on Maui, seven on the Big Island, one on Kauai, and six Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state and one on Kauai. As a result of updated information, one case each from Oahu and the Big Island was removed from the counts, state 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 4,720 COVID-19 new test results, for a 2.7% statewide positivity rate.

The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 16,760 on Oahu, 1,769 in Hawaii County, 746 on Maui, 136 on Kauai, 106 on Lanai, and 22 on Molokai. There are also 320 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.

Hawaii health officials said that of the state’s total infection count, 1,489 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 21 today.

By island, Oahu has 1,153 active cases, Maui has 169, Big Island has 147, Kauai has 16, and Molokai has four, according to the latest tally.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,394 have required hospitalizations, with seven new hospitalizations — six on Oahu and one on Hawaii island — 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 1,391 hospitalizations within the state, 1,120 have been on Oahu, 84 on the Big Island, 69 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 53 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of noon Thursday, with 14 in intensive care units and seven 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 101 and the positivity rate is 3.6%, according to Caldwell.