Hub COVID now a youth movement
Growing percentage of cases in city’s younger residents
Boston’s coronavirus cases continue to be increasingly driven by young people, Mayor Martin Walsh said Thursday, warning the city’s youths to remain vigilant.
Walsh told reporters that 48% of the cases in the past two weeks have been in people under 30.
“I understand that young people will be active and social,” the mayor said. “But we also need you to be cautious and be careful — asking you to stay six feet away from each other.”
Walsh added, “And just be very careful — don’t have any indoor gatherings. And even if you do not get seriously ill, you can certainly spread the virus to your families, friends or other loved ones.”
Boston Health and Human Services Chief Marty Martinez said it doesn’t appear that the cases among the youths come from any major individual incidents — it’s just happening across the board.
“So it’s not that specific clusters are being created, but we definitely see it trending much younger, which means we just need to take more precautions and really heed the guidance to keep everyone safe,” Martinez told reporters. “That’s been a trend that we’ve seen post the peak of the coronavirus — that younger Bostonians are testing positive.”
Martinez said the city apparently needs to reiterate its normal coronavirus guidance.
“A lot of it has to do with folks feeling like, you know, the severe impact is really for those who are mostly older,” Martinez said. “And so we do think that that messaging needs to be reinforced — facial covering, social distancing, washing your hands, really doing everything you can to keep yourself safe and not congregating.”
The mayor said the city added 60 cases on Thursday for a total of 16,430 since the start of the pandemic. The city reported another welcome day of no new deaths, keeping the total at 759 Boston residents killed by COVID.
Walsh noted that the the positive rate in Boston was 2.8% for the week ending last Sunday — up significantly from 1.5% the previous week, though Walsh chalked some of that up to less testing done over Labor Day weekend. The city had 1,800 residents a day tested last week, far down from 3,000 a day the previous week.
“So it’s possible that the testing ramped up again, the positive rate will go back down,” Walsh speculated.
“So we’re going to monitor that very closely to see as we move forward here, but any increases that we’re seeing in numbers is concerning.”
The mayor did say that the positive test rate in East Boston, one of the city’s main hot spots, has nudged downward, now sitting at 5.2%. That’s down from a height of over 11%.