Governor’s Office:Presence of COVID-19 Variant ConfirmedAt an afternoon news conference Governor David Ige announced that the DOH State Laboratories Division (SLD) has been working with private sector labs to collect and examine specimens of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Gov. Ige said, “We also reported that whole genome sequencing was being performed on four specimens containing a molecular clue to determine whether they are the B1.1.7 variant, commonly called the UK variant.
The results are in – and for the first time, we can confirm that this highly transmissible variant has been detected here in Hawaiʻi.” (See more detail in DOH item below).“The good news is that we know how to slow the spread, and we’ve proven we can be successful in.