State health officials are now tracking data on COVID tests and deaths among residents working in the commercial sex industry, according to the Massachusetts Chapter 93 daily data report.
The Chapter 93 law, passed last year, seeks to address disparities in the treatment of COVID, requiring certain demographic information to be included in the exams and case data that local health councils share with the Department of Public Health.
Authorities told the Boston Herald that they entered the category for the first time on December 3, after a Massachusetts resident recently took the COVID-19 test and was identified as a sex worker. No new test results, cases or deaths have been reported among sex workers in the past 24 hours, the data show.
“Because of the small number of reports on this occupation, no additional information is available,” a spokesman told the newspaper.
State health officials track COVID data across a variety of occupations, from medical workers and first responders to food service workers, construction workers, teachers, plumbers, and more.
Health officials confirmed 4,283 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, including the first case of the highly contagious variant of respiratory infection identified in the UK. Sixty-seven deaths have also been reported.
The person testing positive for the new strain is a Boston woman in her 20s who fell ill after traveling to the UK, DPH officials said on Sunday.
At least 448,311 Massachusetts residents have contracted the virus across the state and 13,372 have died since the pandemic began.
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