Health officials reported 134 new COVID-19 cases statewide on Monday.
The new cases included 104 on Oahu, 13 on the Big Island, 14 on Maui, one on Kauai and two Hawaii residents diagnosed out of state.
Hawaii received its first shipment of 12,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine Monday, according to Brooks Baehr, a spokesman for the health department. Maui, Hawaii and Kauai counties will receive 2,000 doses each, and Oahu will receive 6,000.
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said that the new cases recorded Monday on Oahu included 55 inmates and eight staff at the Halawa Correctional Facility, in addition to the 93 cases reported at the facility on Sunday.
Caldwell said the cases at Halawa will not affect any decision to return Oahu to the restrictive Tier 1 in its reopening strategy. Oahu’s weekly case rate, excluding inmates, would be 82.6 new cases and 2.9% of tests returning positive, compared to a weekly case rate of 105 cases and 3.6% test positivity rate counting inmates.
“Inmates are part of our population and they’re equally important,” he said at a press conference, “but for the purposes of moving back to tier one, they’ll be subtracted unless there’s some major negative impact on our health care resources.”
The Department of Health’s acting epidemiologist, Dr. Sarah Kemble, told Civil Beat last week that the department believes inmate cases should still be counted on Oahu because they’re still part of the “community picture” and people who work at the facility have community ties. Kemble said the state is conducting more rapid COVID-19 testing at jails and prisons to keep tabs on future cases.
The official state death toll is 282. Civil Beat calculates at least 287 people have died from the disease in Hawaii, including five deaths on Hawaii island that are still pending medical verification by the state. Hawaii County Civil Defense has recorded 49 deaths on the Big Island.
Oahu remains in Tier 2 of its reopening plan but could revert back to Tier 1 with harsher restrictions if the island’s upward trend in cases continues. In the last seven days, the island has seen an average of 105 new cases reported daily. Approximately 3.6% of tests conducted on the island were positive last week.
According to Janice Okubo, spokeswoman for the Hawaii Department of Health, the COVID-19 case reports are based on test results from laboratories statewide and include both residents and tourists.
Hawaii residents who test positive out of state also are included, as well as cases confirmed among military service members and their families, although military cases are not specifically identified.
There were 1,688 cases recorded during the past two weeks — a metric that the health department uses as a proxy to estimate how many people have active infections.
For more information, check this Hawaii Department of Health COVID-19 site or this state site, and the Hawaii Data Collaborative COVID-19 Tracking site. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency also provides this comprehensive dashboard.
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