As noted in our “Opening” project intro, many states have paused their school COVID-19 case reporting for the summer—and a few have stopped reporting school cases entirely. Hawaii appears to be an exception: this state actually improved its reporting for the new school year.
Where the state previously just reported total cases for each island (or county) of Hawaii, it’s now reporting cases by individual school. Hawaii also reports the date a case was reported and the last date that the COVID-positive individual was on campus.
It’s still not perfect; ideally, Hawaii would also give us in-person enrollment or other numbers to contextualize these cases. But it’s a big improvement, useful for both Hawaii public school families and researchers like yours truly. Thanks Hawaii!