LIHU‘E — Identified clusters from two weeks ago are under control, Dr. Janet Berreman, Kaua‘i District Health Officer, said Thursday, and case counts across the island have trended downward.
Kaua‘i began seeing a spike in community-spread cases at the end of April and reported two restaurant clusters and events linked to this rise in numbers on May 1. This rise pushed the county to Tier 3, which placed tighter restrictions on restaurants and bars.
“Our cases are coming down,” Berreman said. “Kaua‘i no longer has the highest per population case rate in the state and with continued care, I’m optimistic that we can return to our familiar position of lowest disease rate in the state.”
The restaurant clusters, which involved Lihu‘e restaurants Rob’s Good Times Grill and Troy’s Bar, identified 32 total cases, 28 from the restaurants and four from cases that spread to other cases.
“Those numbers have not grown since last week,” Berreman said. “It has been two weeks since those exposures took place, and that fact that we are seeing no further spread is very encouraging.”
Two other workplaces that were classified as clusters, one in the construction/industrial setting and one office, identified a total of seven cases, according to the May 6 DOH COVID-19 cluster report.
“The two smaller workplace clusters have similarly shown no further spread since last week—again, mahalo to the businesses for their cooperation,” Berreman said during Thursday’s COVID-19 briefing.
Around the same time, an employee at Kaua‘i Community Correctional Center had tested positive for COVID-19, and since then, the DOH has conducted two rounds of testing for over 200 staff and inmates, with a third round of testing on its way Friday, Berreman reported.
As of May 13, the county has seen a total of 49 new COVID-19 infections this month, 43 of which were community-acquired. Thursday, the DOH reported no new cases.
Currently, the county has 13 active cases, none of which are hospitalized.
Mayor Derek Kawakami said the county will remain on Tier 3 for at least another week as case numbers remain flat.
