Hawaii reports 2 new coronavirus-related deaths on Oahu and 132 additional infections statewide

Hawaii health officials today reported two new coronavirus-related deaths on Oahu and 132 new infections, bringing the state’s totals since the start of the pandemic to 322 fatalities and 24,353 cases.

No further details were immediately available regarding the latest deaths.

The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll includes 253 fatalities on Oahu, 45 on Hawaii island, 20 on Maui, one on Kauai, and three Hawaii residents who died on the mainland. The Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency said Saturday that the Big Island’s COVID-19 death toll remained at 51, but state officials have not verified coronavirus as a factor in six of those fatalities. Hawaii County has reported no coronavirus-related deaths in the past two weeks.

The U.S. coronavirus-related death toll was more than 397,000 today with total coronavirus cases across the nation nearing 24 million.

Today’s new statewide infection cases reported by the Health Department include 86 on Oahu, 29 on Maui, seven on the Big Island, one on Kauai, and nine residents diagnosed outside of Hawaii, officials said.

The statistics released today reflect the new infection cases reported to the department on Friday.

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The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 19,891 on Oahu, 2,073 in Hawaii County, 1,457 on Maui, 173 on Kauai, 106 on Lanai and 25 on Molokai. There are also 628 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state. As a result of updated information, health officials said, two Maui cases were removed from the total counts today.

Health officials also said today that of the state’s total infection count, 2,191 cases were considered to be active. 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 increased by one today.

By island, Oahu has 1,615 active cases, Maui has 398, the Big Island has 151, Kauai has 24 and Molokai has three, according to the state’s latest tally. Lanai has no active COVID cases.

Health officials counted 5,457 new COVID-19 test results in today’s tally, for a 2.3% statewide positivity rate. The state’s 7-day average positivity rate is 2.6%, according to the Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,611 have required hospitalizations, with seven new hospitalizations on Oahu reported today by state health officials.

Four hospitalizations in the statewide count are Hawaii residents who were diagnosed and treated outside the state. Of the 1,607 hospitalizations within the state, 1,417 have been on Oahu, 92 on the Big Island, 86 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 108 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of 8:30 a.m. Friday, with 20 in intensive care units and 18 on ventilators.

State health officials have started posting the total number of vaccinations administered statewide. As of Wednesday, the department said 40,386 individuals have been vaccinated since Jan. 9 — including 25,613 in Honolulu County, 4,182 in Maui County, 4,251 in Hawaii County, and 2,740 in Kauai County. The vaccination numbers are updated weekly.

Oahu moved to the less-restrictive Tier 2 of Honolulu’s four-tier economic recovery plan on Oct. 22. 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 99 and the seven-day average positivity rate is 3.2%, according to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi.

Blangiardi said Thursday he hoped to stay in Tier 2, a four-tiered framework established by former Mayor Kirk Caldwell. Under Tier 3, social gatherings of up to 10 would be allowed, up from 5 under Tier 2, and retail businesses would be able to operate at full capacity, rather than 50% capacity under Tier 2.