DOH Announces 9th COVID-19 Death

The Hawai‘i Department of Health on Saturday reported the ninth coronavirus-related death in the state.

A woman, over the age of 65 with underlying medical conditions, had tested positive for the virus when she was hospitalized on O‘ahu.

Twenty adults and one minor are among the new cases of COVID-19 being reported by DOH. Of this number, 16 are Hawai‘i residents, two are non-residents and three cases are of unknown residence, pending investigation.

Eleven cases are community-spread, while 10 are unknown. None are associated with travel. Lana‘i remains the only island with no reported cases. 

The state reported 34 cases on the Big Island Saturday, while Hawai‘i County Civil Defense reported 31 total cases on the island Saturday morning. Of those, Civil Defense said, 25 are considered recovered.

Hawai‘i COVID-19 Counts as of 12:00 noon, April 11, 2020

** Refers to positive cases that have an unknown county of diagnosis at the time of this report. As more information becomes available for these cases, they are assigned to the proper County of Diagnosis. A negative number indicates the number of previously unknown cases that have now been assigned to a county.

Testing

To date, more than 17,000 tests have been conducted statewide. A little less than 3% of those tested have returned positive results, DOH wrote in a report Saturday.

Thirty-five tests were inconclusive.

LABORATORY TESTING DATA

The community sentinel testing program continues. It has now tested 925 people. Those tested were chosen at random from across all islands. All individuals had reported flu-like symptoms but tested negative for the flu virus.

Of the 925 specimens tested, 17 of them, or 1.8%, have been positive to date. Surveillance findings for the previous week have been assessed weekly since the program began during the second week of March to determine the geographic spread of community-associated COVID-19 in combination with severity of influenza-like illness activity.

The COVID-19 Sentinel Surveillance program is operated based on the framework of the existing influenza surveillance program. Healthcare providers should continue to evaluate patients with respiratory illness and order influenza diagnostic testing as clinically indicated, DOH said in a press release.

They are asked to send the DOH influenza requisition form (used for both the influenza and COVID-19 surveillance programs) and submit with respiratory specimens collected for a clinical diagnosis of influenza-like illness, to facilitate DOH’s investigations. Reporting on the sentinel surveillance is provided weekly as part of the DOH Flu/Respiratory Disease Surveillance Report online.