New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
Katie Lannan
State House News Service
More than 10,000 new cases of COVID-19 were identified in Massachusetts over the Christmas holiday weekend, and 2,156 people were hospitalized with the respiratory disease as of Sunday, according to Department of Public Health data.
One hundred new deaths reported Sunday and another 46 on Saturday bring the pandemic’s death toll here to 11,852 since March 20, a figure that rises to 12,110 when deaths among people with likely COVID-19 cases are added. The DPH did not publish its daily case and testing breakdown on Friday because of the holiday, and reported two days of data on Saturday. Saturday’s numbers included 7,424 new confirmed COVID-19 cases. On Sunday, the caseload grew by another 2,973 to 338,704. Of those cases, public health officials deem 78,688 to be currently active. As of Thursday, when the DPH published its more thorough weekly report, it considered a total of 229,910 people to have recovered from COVID-19 and no longer self-isolating. That report showed a statewide positivity rate of 6.14 percent over the previous 14 days, with 1,170,158 tests conducted over that time period.
Twelve cities and towns had local positivity rates that were at least twice the statewide rate, and 43 were above 10 percent. Also Thursday, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education reported 552 new COVID-19 cases among students participating in hybrid or in-person learning in public schools, and 397 cases among school district staff with building access. Those figures are from the week of Dec. 17-23. The total 949 new school cases is below the 1,009 logged the previous week.
