Hawaii health officials today reported six new coronavirus-related deaths and 153 new infections, bringing the state’s totals since the start of the pandemic to 342 fatalities and 25,154 cases.
Five of the deaths were on Oahu and one was on Maui. No further details were immediately available regarding the latest fatalities.
The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll includes 271 fatalities on Oahu, 46 on Hawaii island, 21 on Maui, one on Kauai, and three Hawaii residents who died on the mainland.
The U.S. coronavirus-related death toll was more than 418,000 today.
Today’s new statewide infection cases reported by the Health Department include 103 on Oahu, 34 on Maui, eight on the Big Island, and eight residents diagnosed outside of Hawaii, officials said.
The statistics released today reflect the new infection cases reported to the department on Friday.
The total number of coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 20,436 on Oahu, 2,122 in Hawaii County, 1,605 on Maui, 177 on Kauai, 106 on Lanai and 25 on Molokai. There are also 683 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state As a result of updated information, two cases from Oahu were re-categorized to Hawaii island, and once case from Oahu and another from the Big Island were removed from the counts, health officials said today.
Health officials also said today that of the state’s total infection count, 1,700 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 36 today.
By island, Oahu has 1,246 active cases, Maui has 328, the Big Island has 116, Kauai has 10, according to the state’s latest tally. Lanai and Molokai have no active COVID cases.
Health officials counted 5,853 new COVID-19 test results in today’s tally, for a 2.5% statewide positivity rate. The state’s 7-day average positivity rate is 2.4%, according to the Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard.
Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 1,660 have required hospitalizations, with three new hospitalizations 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 1,656 hospitalizations within the state, 1,452 have been on Oahu, 97 on Maui, 94 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 96 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of Friday morning, with 21 in intensive care units and 18 on ventilators.
Health officials said that as of Jan. 18, 70,095 vaccines have been administered of the 154,150 received by the state. The vaccinations by county are Honolulu, 39,886; Maui, 10,195; Hawaii, 7,011; and Kauai, 5,328. The total also included 7,675 administered under the federal pharmacy program.
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 78 and the seven-day average positivity rate is 3.0%, according to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi.
Blangiardi said last week 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.