trinity

This Halloween, the Hawai‘i Department of Health recommends celebrating with your household members at home and avoiding traditional door-to-door trick or treating where treats are handed to children or children take candy from a shared bucket. These are high-risk activities as they can result in close contact and crowding among people outside your household. Encourage safe Halloween activities by sharing these infographics with friends and family. View lower, moderate, and higher risk Halloween activities recommended by the CDC.

Q&A with Dr. Brent Tatsuno, Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine at The Queen’s Medical Center A pulse oximeter is a digital device that measures the percentage of oxygen in your blood. Dr. Tatsuno shares about the phenomenon of “silent hypoxemia” that occurs when COVID-19 patients feel fine but have low oxygen saturation. COVID-19 doesn’t always cause obvious breathing problems even when people are heading toward respiratory failure. Honolulu resident Wilma Ogimi recently shared her early detection success story in using a small device – after she received a false negative test result for the virus. The retired medical [...]

Photos courtesy of Hawaii National Guard The pandemic has intensified the differences between the haves and the have-nots. Health and social disparities in Hawaii have become more pronounced. The Hawaii Department of Health, in collaboration with other government agencies and nonprofit organizations, is tackling this head on, and is an important part of an overall strategy to make sure everyone has access to care. Rather than being marginalized, low-income families and individuals have been a top priority in outreach and education efforts to keep everyone in the community healthy. A Model of Effective Collaboration Much of this outreach [...]

Addressing the grey area of socializing with family and friends who aren’t members of your household. Of the many ways COVID-19 has changed life for Hawaii residents, physical distancing–in the land of aloha hugs and potlucks–is among the toughest to follow. It’s only natural that, as fatigue sets in and guidelines extend into the indeterminate future, even well-intentioned people are looking for loopholes that allow them to reunite with loved ones. But is there any safe way to see family or friends while following physical-distancing guidelines? There is always risk. The U.S. Centers for Disease [...]

Contact tracing was new to many of us in the beginning stages of the pandemic. Now, contact tracing has become a part of our everyday vocabulary. The Hawaii Department of Health’s team of contact tracers helps keep the spread of COVID-19 under control. The health department currently has 51 contact tracers who are actively working on investigations, identifying contacts to cases, and following up and monitoring those contacts. If necessary, the Department of Health can rapidly ramp up and expand its contact tracing team. It has an additional 128 people in the Disease Outbreak Control Division and Public Health Nursing [...]

Joe Soong is a Multisystem Therapy (MST) therapist with Child and Family Service in Kailua-Kona. The pandemic may have put some activities on hold, but it has not stopped love and caring for families. At a time when there is more social distancing and families separated from each other, there are bright, uplifting stories of families coming together because of hard-working professionals in communities across our state. Thanks to dedicated therapists like Joe Soong, a Multisystem Therapy (MST) therapist with Child & Family Service in Kailua-Kona, support for juvenile offenders and families has continued without interruption during the [...]

There is a safe way to expand your social circle without compromising your health. Social bubbles, also known as a pods or “quaranteams” can help you socialize safely after months of physical distancing. Joining with another household or just one or two individuals allows families to take turns caring for each other’s children, provides children more opportunities to play and socialize with others, and will help ease loneliness and provide improved social support for those who have felt isolated. 1. What is a social bubble? You probably have a social bubble and may not realize it. It could be [...]