Unique pattern of COVID-19 infection in the State of Hawai‘i

•COVID-19 rates examined in Pacific Islanders living in Hawai‘i.•Pacific Islanders account for 4% of the population but almost 30% of cases.•Little COVID-19 transmission from Pacific Islanders to other groups.•There is an epidemic within an epidemic in Hawai‘i. This is a brief report on an unusual observation regarding COVID-19 cases. The State of Hawaii is one of the most remote of the Pacific islands and the population is approximately 1.4 million. The racial and ethnic diversity is very high. For example, white Caucasians comprise ∼25%, Asians including Japanese, Chinese, and other Asians account for ∼30%, Hawaiians for 20%, and Pacific Islanders mostly from Micronesia and Samoa comprise ∼4%. We discovered that the COVID-19 rate in the latter group was up to 10 times that in all of the other groups combined and they accounted for almost 30% of cases. Moreover, we are unaware of COVID-19 transmission from Pacific Islanders to islanders with other ethnicities. Thus, there is an epidemic within the epidemic in Hawai‘i.