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Hawaii reports 66 new coronavirus infections statewide

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM
                                Queen’s APRN Ruby Takahashi readied the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination to be administered, Dec. 15, at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu. The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll remains at 282 with no new deaths reported today.

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM

Queen’s APRN Ruby Takahashi readied the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination to be administered, Dec. 15, at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu. The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll remains at 282 with no new deaths reported today.

Hawaii health officials today reported 66 new coronavirus infections statewide, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 20,417 cases.

The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll remains at 282 with no new deaths reported today.

The official state Department of Health coronavirus-related death toll includes 218 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 322,000 today.

>> RELATED: State worker furloughs might be pushed back to July, Hawaii Gov. David Ige says

Today’s new statewide infection cases reported by the Health Department include 51 on Oahu, six on the Big Island, seven on Maui, and two Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state, officials said.

The statistics released on Tuesdays reflect the new cases reported to the department on Sundays, which are typically have the lowest daily counts due to reduced testing numbers.

Health officials counted 3,486 COVID-19 new test results in today’s tally, for a 1.89% statewide positivity rate.

The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 17,209 on Oahu, 1,822 in Hawaii County, 792 on Maui, 138 on Kauai, 106 on Lanai and 22 on Molokai. There are also 328 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.

Hawaii health officials said that of the state’s total infection count, 1,700 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 12 today.

By island, Oahu has 1,336 active cases, Maui has 176, Big Island has 171, and Kauai has 17, according to the latest tally. Molokai no longer has an active COVID case.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,415 have required hospitalizations, with two hospitalizations 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 1,679 hospitalizations within the state, 1,527 have been on Oahu, 94 on the Big Island, 47 on Maui, 11 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 60 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of noon Monday, with 17 in intensive care units and 10 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 108 and the positivity rate is 3.7%, according to Caldwell.


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


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