Hey, there! Log in / Register

Massachusetts exceeds 5,000 Covid-19 cases for third day in a row; hospitalizations increase

Massachusetts today reported 5,356 new Covid-19 cases, the third day in a row numbers have exceeded 5,000 - far exceeding even the highest numbers seen during the spring surge.

The state also reported 1,428 people are now in the hospital with Covid-19, the first time the state has reached that level since early June, when the state was coming down from its spring Covid-19 surge. It's the tenth day in a row that Covid-19 hospitalization has increased.

Some 41 Massachusetts residents died from Covid-19, the state reports.

Boston hospitalization and death rates remain far below those seen in the spring, however.

Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

This increase in cases is real, and concerning. But it's hard to compare now apples to spring apples when we didn't have the testing capacity we have now.

I just pulled up the April 1st data, just for an idea. 4803 tests with 1118 positives. Today, we are talking about 5,356 positives in 106,116 PCR tests. Thats 23% positive vs. 5% positive. If we had today's testing capacity back then, for all we know maybe today's case increases will still be worse, but we will never really know for sure.

Regardless, we know we suppressed the spread of the virus here, we know it because case counts declined while we increased testing. Now we are seeing an obvious increase again, even compared to last week or the last few weeks we are seeing a statistically significant increase. And our testing capacity didn't jump in that time, so that's not why we are seeing more positives today compared to a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, this is going to get worse again before it gets better.

up
Voting closed 0

Though it's true we didn't have the testing capacity in April, the MWRA data does exist that far back... it suggests our caseload now exceeds our caseload then.

up
Voting closed 0

the only real comparison with spring we can really make is the testing at Boston sewage treatment facility. Everything else is just pure speculation.

up
Voting closed 0

We had this kind of testing capacity building through the summer months and through the fall. That's enough data to know that we are in trouble.

Also critically important: hospitalization numbers are climing and are maxing out in northeast MA.

See https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-december-5-2020/download for more details, hospitalization starts on page 13. Note that hospitalization lags case surge by a couple of weeks.

up
Voting closed 0

Massachusetts monthly case totals

  • Jun: 8,414 casss
  • Jul: 8,730 cases
  • Aug: 10,921 cases
  • This is a total of 28,065 cases for 3 months.

    Today Massachusetts sits at 25,808 cases for the first 5 days of December.

    Tomorrow, unless we post significantly less than half the number of cases averaged over the last 3 days, Massachusetts will have surpassed 3 months worth of new cases in the first week of December with a day to spare.

    up
    Voting closed 0

    I don't think this is going to go down.. its going to continue to go up. And then of course, Christmas.. sigh

    up
    Voting closed 0

    In other words everybody...."Shut it down again and hit the reset button"

    up
    Voting closed 0

    I told all my friends to do the same. I shop every two weeks at most - three if I can swing it - and try to keep a month of stuff in reserve.

    I warned people last time, too.

    At least most people now know what an epidemiologist is and what we do.

    up
    Voting closed 0

    Am I the only one who remembers, back when the spring wave was ebbing, that many public health people said we may be able to open things up more over the summer, but that we should expect to have to close down again with the cold weather? I think even Walsh said something like that at various points. Well, we enjoyed that first part, and now it's over and it's time for the unpleasant second part of the plan.

    It seems like over the summer people decided to believe something had fundamentally changed, that we had learned something new about the virus or its treatment that meant we wouldn't need to go back to shutdowns, but it's simply not true. What we've learned about the virus confirmed what we suspected before. Improvements in treatment have made the illness more survivable, but have not lessened its toll on hospital resources, certainly not by an order of magnitude. We saw this coming months ago. We all know what we need to do, and denying it won't change anything. It's time to shut down again.

    up
    Voting closed 0