Hawaii State Epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Kemble answered questions from the media Tuesday afternoon about today’s COVID-19 count, pediatric and advanced cases, the mu variant, and booster shots. . During a brief Zoom update, state health officials provided some updates on what we’re seeing now and what we can expect in the coming weeks.
What today’s count of cases tells us:
On Tuesday there were an additional 499 cases of COVID-19 in Hawaii. The latest data represents a total of 11,265 “active” cases over two weeks.
“Today, our new seven-day daily cases are 706; this may indicate a slight recovery from the numbers we’ve seen, but we’re definitely not out of the woods yet,” said state epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Kemble . “We continue to see a very high number of cases. Remember that a month ago, 700 would be an incredibly alarming case for our islands. We also know that there is still a delay, between when we see cases and when we see hospitalizations and deaths. And, tragically, we anticipate that many more deaths will be reported in the coming weeks due to the cases we have already known. “
“Hospitals, as you know, continue to address critical issues with shortages, whether to address last week’s lack of oxygen, bed shortages and continue to try to provide excellent care to patients entering our hospitals.” , he said. Dr. Kemble.
“Another factor that we must take into account are some variations in the tests from time to time. So, holiday weekend – I’m not sure people were en masse to do tests like they could do during other times. So I think we really need to see how things unfold next week before drawing conclusions about where the case numbers are, ”Dr. Kemble said.
“In the meantime, I hope people have taken into account the mitigation guidelines for staying in their homes, avoiding important meetings, staying home when they are sick, and if we can continue to do that, we could see a real decrease in case trends, which will be much needed, ”Dr. Kemble said.
Pediatric cases:
“We are seeing more cases than ever among pediatric populations. About a quarter of our cases are finally being seen. Part of that is related to the overall increase in cases. So as the total number of cases increases , we will see more children diagnosed and eventually ending up in hospital, just because the overall numbers increase.But we are also looking at it a bit upwards, as a proportion of all cases.This may be partly driven by the vaccine “Because the groups that are not eligible for vaccination are our youngest children, so we see an increase in the proportion in the cases of this group, which is our unprotected group,” said Dr. Kemble.
“When we try to examine the severity of the disease, we keep track of what the proportion of hospitalization of national cases has been, about 2%. That’s still what we see in Hawaii.” Therefore, we do not see an increase in the severity of the disease among these pediatric cases, but we do see more infected children, ”said Dr. Kemble.
Since the onset of the pandemic, there has only been one pediatric death from COVID-19 in Hawaii. In April 2021, we reported a death involving a 0- to 10-year-old boy who experienced symptoms of COVID-19 shortly after arriving on the islands. He had known the underlying health conditions and was visiting Hawaii with his parents from another state, both parents were completely vaccinated before making the trip to Hawaii.
Advanced cases:
As of Aug. 26, the State Department of Health had documented 2,419 advanced cases in Hawaii. “This represents approximately 7% of all COVID cases in the state since January and approximately 0.3% of the fully vaccinated population,” Dr. Kemble said.
“Part of the way we determine advanced cases is case research. We need to call people and ask them if they have been vaccinated. Therefore, this is likely to be an underestimation of the actual figures, because we do not reach out to everyone to find out this information. But we do examine it better when we examine who is in the hospital, because usually these people have their vaccine records checked. So we have news from hospitals and we are seeing maybe 10% to 15% of people in the hospital who have advanced cases of vaccines, ”Dr. Kemble said.
“I think there are a couple of things to keep in mind when thinking about advanced vaccine cases. One of them is that the more infection circulates around us, the more cases we will advance, because even though we know that the vaccines vaccines work (they are very effective in preventing hospitalization and death), they do not prevent all infections from occurring, “said Dr. Kemble.” And if you have enough infection pressure around you because you are surrounded by people. infected, you will have some of these advanced cases.Where they tend to see more hospitalizations are in the elderly and people with multiple comorbidities.These are people who could land in the hospital after going through the cold sometimes or other viruses common, like the flu, so expect something even though it’s unfortunate. “
In variant:
“We’ve had some cases of mu variant here in Hawaii, detected through our entire genome sequencing program with the State Laboratories Division. In addition, they were detected in June. Similar to other jurisdictions. who have seen mu, we saw some cases during this summer period that seemed to have decreased at this time.We are not seeing continued detection in recent tests.CD has not been summoned to Mu at this time as a variant of concern. one of the ones we tracked down in the variant report, that’s why you may not have seen it there, ”Dr. Kemble said.
“Part of what makes a variant a variant of concern is not only the characteristics of this particular strain, but also what is the propensity of this strain to take over and become the dominant strain.” , said Dr. Kemble. “It simply came to our notice then. We are really seeing that it looks like the delta has found its niche here and still far exceeds 95% of the cases we are seeing in the state. So our current problems are really driven by delta, not mu. “
Reinforcement shots:
“Right now, booster shots are something we are trying to distinguish from the third dose I would give to an immunocompromised individual. The ACIP, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, has made recommendations that if you have severe immunocompression, if you have cancer and are on chemotherapy, if you are taking steroids in really high doses every day, some conditions that would make it difficult for the body to organize the initial immune response: three doses are recommended instead of two, “Dr. Kemble said, noting that this is the only current recommendation for additional doses beyond the two dose series for the mRNA vaccine. .
“For booster dams, we are all waiting for a review of the FDA’s data and emergency use authorization before providing recommendations on boosters for the general population,” Dr. Kemble. “There are a couple of reasons why I wouldn’t recommend running today to get your boost boost. One of them is that we still don’t have a lot of information about when we’ll get it, what the impact will be, what populations will be.” “There are a lot of unknowns that we still don’t know about the drivers.”
“What we do know now is that if you haven’t had a single vaccine, you will benefit tremendously from doing this full series now,” said Dr. Kemble, who said the unvaccinated population is the number one priority for vaccines.