Grover C. Magnus 
Recently, on the island of Hawaii, five positive cases of COVID-19 were reported among production members of “Love Island USA,” a CBS reality show currently filming in Hilo, according to the commissioner of the State to Cinematography, Donne Dawson.
Dawson confirmed the case report on Sunday after the news broke on social media on Saturday.
The state Department of Health “has been notified, contact tracing has been completed for all cases, and those in close contact are in quarantine and testing of these cases will continue,” Dawson said in Honolulu. Star-Advertiser by phone.
“’Love Island Season 3′ went beyond the CDC and union’s COVID back-to-work guidelines for production,” the show’s production company ITV Entertainment said in an emailed statement.
The precautions include “high frequency testing (2-3 times per week), PPE for anyone not in front of the camera, contact tracing and quarantine protocols,” the statement said, noting that the production has been in constant contact with national and local authorities according to their respective health. guidelines.
“The health and safety of our cast and crew remains our number one priority,” said ITV Entertainment.
Due to pandemic procedures, the film industry “is probably the safest of all industries right now,” Dawson said, noting that since the industry reopened in Hawaii under stringent sanitary procedures at the end of the year. ‘last summer, the state “is gone for months and months with zero to one or two isolated positive cases on any of the statewide productions” and that the productions are kept isolated from the community. .
Responding to a question on Sunday, state health department spokesman Brooks Baehr said he had not heard of the “Love Island” cases, but noted the department was not disclosing. not the location of individual cases or clusters of COVID-19 “unless there is an imminent health threat.”
Meanwhile, the state’s health ministry reported 643 new confirmed and probable coronavirus infections on Sunday, bringing the state’s total since the start of the pandemic to 46,503 cases.
No new virus-related deaths were reported on Sunday, so the statewide COVID-19 death toll remained at 542.
Sunday’s case count by island included 431 new cases on Oahu, 54 on Maui, 118 on the island of Hawaii, 22 in Kauai and 11 Hawaii residents diagnosed out of state.
The total number of cases now includes probable infections, those of people who never received a confirmatory test but had exposure and symptoms or a positive antigen test.
Statistics released on Sunday reflect the new cases of infection reported to the department on Friday.
Of the state’s total infections, 5,508 cases were considered active, representing an increase of 358 cases, health officials said.
Per island, Oahu has 3,746 active cases, the Big Island has 1,094, Maui has 540, Kauai has 119, Lanai has none, and Molokai has nine.
The number of confirmed and probable coronavirus cases per island since the start of the epidemic is 33,408 in Oahu, 5,547 in Maui, 4,813 in Hawaii County, 634 in Kauai, 117 in Lanai and 90 in Molokai . There are also 1,894 residents of Hawaii who have been diagnosed out of state.
The state’s official coronavirus death toll includes 416 deaths on Oahu, 62 on Maui, 59 on the island of Hawaii, two in Kauai and three Hawaii residents who died out of state.
As of Sunday, infections in the United States stood at more than 35.7 million and the nationwide death toll from the coronavirus was more than 616,800.
