(BIVN) – Hawaiʻi has the lowest mortality rate from COVID-19 infection in the entire United States, says Lieutenant Governor Josh Green, as well as the second lowest case rate in the nation.

Green shared the encouraging words during a Wednesday news conference with Governor David Ige. As he often does at the livestreamed talks, Green displayed the latest stats as he spoke at the podium; such as a big “number one” for Wednesday’s 1 newly identified case of COVID-19 in the entire state.

As of today, 558 people have recovered out of 626 cases, an 89.1% recovery rate, Green said.

“You should be reminded that our health care system has to be adequate before we bring tourism back or bring our economy back,” Green said, “because people could get sick and that’s what we’re always mindful of. We have 2,773 hospital beds, but only 1,404 are occupied. That’s fifty one percent (51%). This means that we can resume some of the normalcy in our health care system and that we have capacity, if we were to have a surge in COVID-19, to take care of people.”

In national comparisons, Hawaiʻi has had 43.6 total cases per 100,000 people, which is the second lowest case rate in the U.S., only behind Montana, Green explained.

Hawai‘i has the lowest mortality rate in the U.S. with 1.2 deaths per 100,000 people.

Green also added that whatever is going on on the mainland is “going to impact us eventually”.

“Just yesterday there was a 20% increase in the number of cases on the mainland,” Green said. “They went from 20,000 to 25,000 cases.”

“That is because they’ve relaxed, very aggressively, some of their restrictions in states where they still have a large number of cases,” Green said. “So, compare a state that has thousands of cases and it’s surging and they relaxed their restrictions, versus the State of Hawaiʻi, which [today] had one case and very good policies.”