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Hawaii records 7 new coronavirus-related deaths, 2,741 additional infections

JAMM AQUINO / SEPT. 1
                                Registered nurse Donny Hamasaki loads a syringe with the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic put on by Kaiser Permanente at the Hawaii Carpenters Apprenticeship and Training Fund Training Center in Kapolei in September.
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JAMM AQUINO / SEPT. 1

Registered nurse Donny Hamasaki loads a syringe with the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic put on by Kaiser Permanente at the Hawaii Carpenters Apprenticeship and Training Fund Training Center in Kapolei in September.

Hawaii Department of Health officials today reported seven new coronavirus-related deaths and 2,741 new confirmed and probable infections statewide, bringing the state’s totals since the start of the pandemic to 1,180 fatalities and 217,775 cases.

No further information was immediately available regarding the latest deaths.

The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll includes 872 fatalities on Oahu, 164 on Hawaii island, 108 on Maui, 22 on Kauai, two on Molokai, and 12 Hawaii residents who died outside the state.

Hawaii Department of Health investigators find out the vaccination status of each positive case after the fact, which is why those statistics are not included side by side in the daily case counts, officials have previously said.

The U.S. coronavirus-related death toll today is nearly 884,000 and the nationwide infection tally is more than 74.2 million.

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Today’s new confirmed and probable infection count includes 1,804 new cases on Oahu, 394 on Hawaii island, 257 on Maui, 217 on Kauai, five on Molokai, six on Lanai, and 58 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state.

State health officials have been including probable infections in its total case counts. Probable infections include people who never received a confirmatory test but are believed to have had the virus because of their known exposure and symptoms or because of a positive antigen test.

The daily infection tally is usually from cases reported to the state two days earlier.

The total number of confirmed and probable coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 152,596 on Oahu, 23,307 on Hawaii island, 25,811 on Maui, 9,662 on Kauai, 857 on Molokai, and 535 on Lanai. There are also 5,007 Hawaii residents who were diagnosed outside of the state.

Health officials also said today that, of the state’s total infection count, 44,651 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 state’s total number of active cases decreased by 1,646 today.

By island, Oahu has 30,348 active cases, the Big Island has 4,835, Maui has 5,935, Kauai has 3,140, Molokai has 195, and Lanai has 198.

Hawaii health officials said the state’s electronic data collection system for cases has become so overwhelmed by the number of test results that it stopped processing negative test results beginning Jan. 16. The move should provide a more accurate daily count of positive cases, officials said, but the change means that the state will not be able to calculate the case positivity rate.

The state’s 7-day average infection count is 2,154, according to the Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard. The seven-day average case count for Oahu is 1,356 as of Thursday, state health officials said today.

The latest Hawaii COVID-19 vaccine summary says 2,706,023 vaccine doses have been administered through state and federal distribution programs as of Friday, up 4,904 from a day earlier.

Health officials say that 74% of the state’s population is now fully vaccinated, 81% have received at least one dose, and 34% have received a third dose.

Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 5,612 have required hospitalizations, with 14 new hospitalizations reported today.

Thirty-two hospitalizations in the overall statewide count are Hawaii residents who were diagnosed and treated outside the state. Of the 5,580 hospitalizations within the state, 4,241 have been on Oahu, 701 on Maui, 512 on the Big Island, 110 on Kauai, 11 on Molokai, and five on Lanai.

According to the latest information from the department’s Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard, a total of 373 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of Friday, with 53 in intensive care units and 35 on ventilators.

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