COVID-19 Cases Climbing

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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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Bread-Baking Appliance Designer Moving to Mass MoCA Campus

By Jack GuerinoiBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Commission welcomed bread-baking appliance designers Brod & Taylor to the campus on Monday.
 
The commission voted to bring Brod & Taylor to Building 1. Owner Michael Taylor, who called into the remote meeting, said the space will primarily be used for photography and content creation to promote their products, with an overarching philosophy of growing the bread-baking community.
 
"The genesis of the whole business of this company is to really get more people involved in bread baking," Taylor said. "We think it is something that is good for individuals and good for society; the more people that bake bread the better people are off in the world. We are looking for ways to make connections between people and the community based on bread baking."
 
The 1,500-square-foot space was built out for the company and will include a home kitchen and a microbakery.
 
Taylor said the company started in 2010 and operated out of Williamstown, above the Purple Pub.
 
"It was a business that brewed slowly in the teens but since COVID, sourdough bread sort of became the center of the world. We have expanded rapidly," Taylor said, adding that the company employs around 15 employees who work in the area.
 
Two years ago, they moved to the Norad Mill in North Adams but found the space too noisy to accommodate filming and content creation, Taylor said.
 
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