Thirty-three new COVID-19 cases reported on isle

Officials say 13 are old cases, won’t trigger new closures

Thirty-three new cases of COVID-19 were reported on Maui on Christmas Eve, a record single-day high that officials blamed on several old incidents and wouldn't trigger any new closures for now.

Maui County said Thursday that they had been told by state health officials that 13 of the new cases were previously investigated and contacts were notified over the past few weeks. The cases were recently confirmed and added to Maui County's case total on Thursday.

County spokesman Brian Perry told The Maui News that this was the highest single-day total for Maui County since Oct. 22, when 28 cases were reported at the height of the outbreak on Lanai.

Many of the 20 new cases are connected to community spread through social gatherings as well as "bar-like behavior," prolonged periods of eating, drinking and conversing without mask wearing or social distancing, Maui District Health Officer Dr. Lorrin Pang said in a news release from the county.

Because Maui County's positivity rate has remained under 2 percent, the county will stay under the "Act with Care" management phase, the news release said. Factors that could change the designation include increased positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average, increased number of active cases and less intensive care unit capacity at hospitals. There was one patient hospitalized on Maui for COVID-19 as of Wednesday morning.

The Hawaii COVID-19 Joint Information Center did not respond to an inquiry on Thursday asking where the recent Maui cases took place and what had caused them.

According to a map on the state Department of Health website, West, Central and South Maui have been the biggest hotspots of late. The Maalaea to Kapalua area (zip code 96761) has seen the most cases in the past 14 days with 62, followed by the Wailuku to Kahakuloa area (96793) at 37 cases, South Maui (96753) at 35 cases, Kahului (96732) at 19 cases and parts of Upcountry (96768) at 15 cases. Other areas of Maui had 10 or fewer cases; East Maui around the Hana area was the only region with no cases reported by the state in the past 14 days.

While the county has been hovering around 2 percent positivity rate, West Maui's rate over the past two weeks has been higher, at 3.6 percent.

Maui County has seen 292 cases in December so far -- second only to Oahu's 1,939 -- with a known risk factor in 210 of the cases. According to DOH data as of Thursday, 78 percent have been community-associated, 8 percent have been travel-associated resident cases and 14 percent have been travel-associated visitor cases.

Active clusters in Maui County have been mostly limited to bars and restaurants, with a handful of gatherings. The department's weekly cluster report, which is released every Thursday, showed three clusters of 29 cases connected to restaurants, two clusters of 13 cases connected to bars and nightclubs, one cluster of three cases associated with social gatherings and one cluster of three cases linked to travel, lodging and tourism.

The county's temporary closure for bars that started Dec. 12 ends Saturday.

"After speaking with medical advisers, I am certain the bar closures prevented an explosion in the infection rate," Mayor Michael Victorino said in a news release. "With the gradual return of our visitor industry and residents going back to work, we expected some community spread, but some of the numbers we see today could have been prevented by people following public health guidelines more carefully.

"By wearing masks, keeping our physical distance and avoiding large gatherings, we protect our public health. We can also avert the economic damage of another shutdown."

Victorino urged people to avoid hosting or attending large gatherings during the holiday season.

"Please keep your gatherings small and limited to members of your household," he said. "For those in small gatherings, please stay at one event."

On Thursday, DOH also said that the state had ordered 11,700 more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 10,900 more doses of the Moderna vaccine. Delivery is expected early next week. A total of 33,450 vaccine doses have already been delivered, and 9,000 vaccines have been administered statewide, including on Maui, where vaccination began for health care workers and first responders on Wednesday.

The department said that it was preparing for the next step of distributing the vaccine to doctors with independent practices.

"Independent providers are on the front lines of the health care system serving residents who fall within the high-risk groups," Health Director Dr. Libby Char said. "Unfortunately, some doses of the federal allocations of the vaccine have been delayed by Operation Warp Speed, necessitating flexibility by the department, our health care partners and the community. We are doing our best to get as many doses of vaccine as we can to the hospitals, in order to vaccinate our frontline healthcare workers."

Char explained that the department is notified of the state's allotment less than a week before receiving each shipment, making vaccination scheduling difficult.

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.