COVID-19 Cases Climbing
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — COVID-19 has been making a resurgence around the state.
There were more than 2,000 new cases in Massachusetts in the past seven days and University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester is mandating employees mask around patients after a jump in COVID-19 positive employees.
iBekshire stopped posting weekly updates on the virus back in March. That last post had the number of positives reported statewide that week as 2,612, a number that had continued to decline along with hospitalizations.
The state interactive dashboard shows higher positive numbers in the eastern part of the state, particularly Middlesex County. Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire and the islands have the lowest numbers.
Confirmed positives had declined to 54 statewide for the first week in July.
The number of positive testing patients hit a low of 98 in July and has now climbed to about 300. About a third of those were being treated primarily for the novel coronavirus and about two-thirds of the total were fully vaccinated.
Berkshire Health Systems is no longer posting the number of positive patients in its facilities. Integritus Healthcare (formerly Berkshire Healthcare) is reporting one patient case and four employee cases at a Holyoke facility.
Nationally, the number of positives is also trending up with hospital admissions up almost 22 percent the second week of August (the most recent reporting). Total hospitalizations to date is 6,256,971.
Deaths, through Aug. 19, were up more than 21 percent and the national total is now 1,138,602.
Of the 91 new cases reported in Berkshire County in the past two weeks, 42 were in Pittsfield. The next highest was seven each in North Adams and Lenox.
The county's 14-day positivity rate is fairly low for the state at 6.49 percent; the state's seven-day rate is 10.83 percent.
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