HONOLULU -- The Hawaii Department of Health announced on Wednesday that it will no longer provide the public updates on the number of new cases of swine flu each week.

Health officials said they are changing the department's focus from compiling numbers to trying to stop the spread of the virus. Investigators are overwhelmed trying to keep up with the cases and tracing people in contact with patients.

Instead, the state's updates will be provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention each Friday.

The state did announce that 218 new cases were found in the past week. That brings the total number of cases to 503 since the first case was confirmed on May 5.