A total of 19 Massachusetts communities are now at a higher risk for coronavirus transmission, nine fewer than last week, health officials said on Thursday. It is the seventh consecutive week that the number has dropped.
Coronavirus risk data from city to city ranks the risk level of communities on a scale of red, the highest, gray – last week, he placed 28 Massachusetts communities in the red zone. Less than two months ago, there were 229 communities in red, reflecting a drop in the state’s COVID-19 metrics as the most recent increase fades. (See this week’s full list of red zone communities below.)
Massachusetts coronavirus metrics have been on a downward trend since about the new year, signaling that the state’s second sudden increase is decreasing. The drop in communities in the red zone appears to be another sign that the increase is slowing, although experts say the more contagious variants of the coronavirus that are appearing in the state may lead to a further increase.
It is here that everyone takes a position on the plan to implant the coronavirus vaccine in Massachusetts.
See Thursday’s city by city coronavirus data here.
Massachusetts COVID Hot Spots
The following 19 communities are at the highest risk level on Thursday: Black stone, Chicopee, Clinton, Fall River, Freetown, Hadley, Haverhill, Lawrence, Ludlow, Lynn, Methuen, New bedford, Peabody, Plainville, Springfield, Sterling, Sutton, West Bridgewater and Weymouth.
Of those communities, six are recently in the red on the list this week: Clinton, Hadley, Ludlow, Plainville, Sterling and Sutton.
And 15 communities came out of the red: Acushnet, Ashburnham, Brockton, Cohasset, Lakeville, Lowell, Middleborough, Plymouth, Revere, Rutland, Southampton, Southbridge, Taunton, Templeton and Westminster.
To qualify for the high-risk red category in the new metrics, communities with populations below 10,000 must have more than 25 cases. For medium sized communities between 10,000 and 50,000 people, they should have an average of more than 10 cases per 100,000 people and a positive test rate of more than 5%. And for larger communities with more than 50,000 people, they must have more than 10 cases per 100,000 people and a positive test rate of more than 4%.
Previously, the state used the average number of detected cases each day for two weeks to determine whether communities in Massachusetts are at high risk for transmitting the coronavirus. The new list considers the population size and the test rate to be positive.
Read this week’s full report here, with data on the percentage of community positivity, county and state level data, and more.
The Department of Public Health is no longer including a community-level risk map in the weekly report. An official told NBC10 Boston that the map is no longer seen as useful as before, now that cases of coronavirus are being reported in most communities.
Massachusetts vaccine data
Just under 2.4 million doses of coronavirus vaccine have been sent to Massachusetts in Thursday’s COVID-19 daily vaccination report, and 80.5%, or 1.93 million, have been administered so far.
The state’s weekly COVID-19 vaccine report, released Thursday, but covering a period from Tuesday to the previous Wednesday, showed progress in the previous week in the number of doses administered in the state: 309,340 versus 215,571.
Changes in Massachusetts hot spot data
The weekly report has a history of somewhat abrupt changes.
When Massachusetts health officials first unveiled a digital coronavirus dashboard in early January, they stopped releasing city-to-city coronavirus metrics weekly, as they are included in the interactive city’s “city and city” tab. It shows the positive test rate for communities and the overall test rate, although not other metrics that were included in the old format.
“The data previously found in this report, including city by city cases and test reports, can now be found on the daily interactive dashboard,” said a note in that week’s shortened weekly report. But a new version of the report was released that night and brought the data back.
More major changes before that dropped the number of communities in the red zone from 121 to 16, as what was defined as a high-risk community has changed. Officials said the adjustment left Massachusetts more in line with risk levels in other states.
However, the numbers increased again over the weeks, eventually increasing to 190 communities in the red zone before the data moved to the interactive panel.
That week’s report also removed the map showing coronavirus data city by city. He showed where communities in the state have a high, moderate or low risk of transmission, but officials said it was no longer very informative.
In previous weeks, employees added information about the COVID-19 clusters, both about where the main clusters were identified – they are listed in the report with an asterisk – and about trends between the clusters.
Color-coded city-by-city data was introduced in August, and the Baker administration announced that the state would focus its strongest COVID mitigation efforts on cities in the red category. Communities can only move to Stage 2 of Phase 3 of the Massachusetts reopening plan, announced in late September, if they are not consistently in the red.
Prior to the introduction of this data, the standard for measuring hot spots was the positive COVID test rate for the previous 14 days. The Department of Public Health’s weekly report also includes this information, along with other metrics, such as how many tests are being carried out locally and how many cases have been reported locally.
Some of the smaller cities in Massachusetts questioned their risk assessment based solely on cases per capita. They said that when a municipality had a few thousand inhabitants, an outbreak in just one household could send it into the red under the criteria of the time: 8 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 inhabitants.