LIHU‘E — The state Department of Health and county will be distributing another round of free at-home COVID-19 tests, Mayor Derek Kawakami announced Monday.
“Test kits are expected to arrive on island (Monday), purchased by Department of Health using federal funding,” he said during the weekly COVID-19 briefing.
Earlier this year, the county distributed 15,000 tests islandwide free of charge to residents, many of the sites exhausting their supplies of 1,500 kits in less than an hour.
A distribution schedule will be released later this week.
”We are so thankful that our case numbers continue to drop,” Kawakami said. “Mahalo to all of you for your sacrifices over the past two years. We are ready to ramp back up if another variant of concern emerges in the future. For now, we will continue scaling back our emergency operations as we move past the crisis phase of this disease.”
Monday, the state DOH Kaua‘i District Health Office announced no new cases of COVID-19. There are currently 27 active cases, with two hospitalized.
As the number of cases continues to decline, the DOH announced it would no longer be producing daily COVID-19 case reports, instead opting for a weekly posting generated on Wednesdays. The KDHO is following suit.
“KDHO staff are working to clear a backlog of cases reported during the omicron surge which require manual data entry,” KDHO Officer Dr. Janet Berreman said Monday.
The manually added cases will appear as new cases in the state’s count, Berreman said.
“These cases have already been reported locally, but will be added to the DOH data tables in the weekly reports between now and the end of the month,” Berreman said. “This backlog developed due to the unprecedented case counts experienced on Kaua‘i during the omicron surge, and is not expected to recur.”
There are about 350 cases needing to be added over the next few weeks, KDHO Deputy Health Officer Lauren Guest said.
“These are not new cases and do not represent a rise in cases,” Guest said.
