Hawaii Department of Health officials today reported a new coronavirus-related death and 70 new infections, bringing the state’s total since the pandemic began to 425 deaths and 26,743 cases.
The latest death was an Oahu man in his 60s with underlying health problems, state officials said this afternoon. No further information was provided.
The official number of coronavirus-related deaths in the state includes 339 deaths on Oahu, 53 on the island of Hawaii, 29 on Maui, one on Kauai and three Hawaii residents who died outside the state.
The number of coronavirus-related deaths in the United States is over 479,000 today, while the national count has risen to 27.4 million.
New cases of infection across the state reported by the Department of Health include 33 on Oahu, 25 on Maui, five on Ilha Grande and seven residents diagnosed outside Hawaii, officials said. As a result of updated information, two cases of Oahu were dropped from the counts.
The statistics released today reflect the new cases of infection reported to the department on Wednesday.
The total number of coronavirus cases per island since the outbreak started is 21,515 in Oahu, 2,211 in Hawaii County, 1,926 in Maui, 179 in Kauai, 109 in Lanai and 26 in Molokai. There are also 777 residents of Hawaii who have been diagnosed outside the state.
Health officials also said today that of the state’s total infection count, 1,034 cases were considered 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 has decreased by 44 today.
By island, Oahu has 738 active cases, Maui has 224, Ilha Grande has 66, Kauai has three, Lanai has two and Molokai has one, according to the state’s latest count.
Health officials counted 5,556 new results from the COVID-19 test in today’s count, for a positivity rate of 1.26% across the state. The state’s 7-day average positivity rate is 1.3%, according to the Hawaii COVID-19 data panel.
Of all confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,779 required hospitalizations, with four new hospitalizations reported today by state health officials.
Four hospitalizations in the state count are Hawaii residents who have been diagnosed and treated outside the state. Of the 1,775 hospitalizations in the state, 1,555 occurred in Oahu, 107 in Maui, 100 in Ilha Grande, seven in Kauai, five in Lanai and one in Molokai.
According to the latest information from the Department of Hawaii’s COVID-19 data panel, a total of 49 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals on Thursday morning, 14 in intensive care units and 12 in ventilators.
Health officials said that as of Sunday, 218,997 vaccines had been administered out of the 288,050 received by the state. Of the vaccines administered, 201,553 were given to the general public and 17,444 were distributed through the federal pharmacy program, officials said. As of Sunday, nearly 11% of Hawaii’s general population and 47% of residents 75 and older have received at least one dose, they said. State officials release updated and verified vaccination numbers every Wednesday.
Oahu moved to the less restrictive Tier 2 of Honolulu’s four-tier economic recovery plan on October 22. To assess whether Honolulu will move to a different level, the city does a “weekly assessment” of two main COVID-19 numbers every Wednesday. To move to Level 3 from Level 2, the 7-day average of new cases must be less than 50 on two consecutive Wednesdays. In addition, the average 7-day positivity rate should be less than 2.5% on those two Wednesdays.
Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi announced today that Oahu will stay at level 2, a four-tier structure established by former mayor Kirk Caldwell until mid-March, unless metrics call for the move to the next level.
The average seven-day Oahu case count is 45 and the seven-day average positivity rate is 1.5%, according to Blangiardi.
This breaking news will be updated as more information becomes available.