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Hawaii records 4 new coronavirus-related deaths on Oahu and 74 additional infections statewide

CRAIG T. KOJIMA / DEC. 12
                                Bags of COVID-19 tests sit on a table at the Waimanalo Health Center, which offered COVID-19 drive-thru testing at Waimanalo District Park in December. Visit <a href="https://www.oneoahu.org/covid19-testing" target="_blank">oneoahu.org/covid19-testing</a> to learn more about COVID-19 testing on Oahu.
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CRAIG T. KOJIMA / DEC. 12

Bags of COVID-19 tests sit on a table at the Waimanalo Health Center, which offered COVID-19 drive-thru testing at Waimanalo District Park in December. Visit oneoahu.org/covid19-testing to learn more about COVID-19 testing on Oahu.

UPDATE: Thursday, 9 a.m.

The state Department of Health confirmed this morning that the Oahu man in his 50s who recently died with COVID-19 is the Halawa prisoner whose death was reported earlier Wednesday by the state Department of Public Safety.

Wednesday, 4:05 p.m.

The four latest coronavirus-related deaths on Oahu included a man in his 50s, and three women, all of whom had underlying conditions and were hospitalized, according to the state Department of Health.

One woman was in her 60s, one in her 80s, and the other in her 90s, health officials said. No further details were released.

It was not immediately known if the man was the same person as the Halawa prisoner announced earlier today by the Department of Public Safety. DPS officials said a prisoner in his 50s with COVID-19 has died, the third virus death of an inmate from Hawaii. They did not release any further information on the man, citing privacy concerns.

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Hawaii Department of Health officials today reported four new coronavirus-related deaths on Oahu and 74 additional infections statewide, bringing Hawaii’s totals since the start of the pandemic to 414 fatalities and 26,081 cases.

No further information was immediately available regarding the latest deaths.

Separately, the state Department of Public Safety announced this morning that an inmate with COVID-19 at Halawa Correctional Facility has died. The man, in his 50s, is the third prisoner from Hawaii to die with the virus. The other two were men imprisoned in the Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona. No further details on the latest death were released.

The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll includes 331 fatalities on Oahu, 53 on Hawaii island, 26 on Maui, one on Kauai, and three Hawaii residents who died outside the state.

The U.S. coronavirus-related death toll was nearly 450,000 today.

Today’s new statewide infection cases reported by the Health Department include 41 on Oahu, 23 on Maui, four on the Big Island, and six residents diagnosed outside of Hawaii, officials said.

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

The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 21,062 on Oahu, 2,177 in Hawaii County, 1,793 on Maui, 179 on Kauai, 107 on Lanai and 25 on Molokai. There are also 738 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.

Health officials also said today that of the state’s total infection count, 1,383 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 decreased by one today.

By island, Oahu has 1,002 active cases, Maui has 291, the Big Island has 86, Kauai has three, and Lanai has one, according to the state’s latest tally. Molokai has no active COVID cases.

Health officials counted 3,624 new COVID-19 test results in today’s tally, for a 1.9% statewide positivity rate. The state’s 7-day average positivity rate is 2%, according to the Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,713 have required hospitalizations, with 10 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 1,709 hospitalizations within the state, 1,498 have been on Oahu, 101 on Maui, 97 on the Big Island, 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 55 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of Wednesday morning, with 21 in intensive care units and 16 on ventilators.

Health officials said that as of Sunday, 157,018 vaccines have been administered of the 227,600 received by the state. The administered vaccinations by county are Honolulu, 105,500; Maui, 14,391; Hawaii, 15,035 and Kauai, 11,755. The total also included several thousand administered under the federal pharmacy program. State officials release the verified updated vaccination numbers each Wednesday.

The statewide administered vaccines reported today represented a 44% increase over last week, while the number of vaccines received was up 33%.

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 60 and the seven-day average positivity rate is 2.4%, according to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi.

Correction: The Department of Public Safety was misidentified in an earlier version of this story.
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