BROCKTON’S JOLLY GOOD ‘YELLOW’
City breaks out of high-risk designation into middle range
Brockton is a rarity among the state’s smaller, poorer cities in that it’s been able to take what were once dramatically spiking coronavirus numbers and now be out of the state’s high-risk “red” designation — where 15 cities and towns now sit.
“We’re starting to see progress,” Brockton Mayor Robert Sullivan told the Herald this week. “Coronavirus is still here in the City of Brockton, but efforts are showing that we’re out of the red.”
Brockton held steady this week at 6.7 average daily cases per 100,000 residents. It’s one of 64 cities and towns that are in the “yellow” — the state’s middlerisk ranking — with now 15 of the state’s 351 cities and towns in the red, down from 17 the previous week. The number in the middle-risk ranking nearly doubled, from about three dozen last week.
These distinctions are determined by that average daily case count per 100,000 residents for the past 14 days. The cities and towns in the red are Nantucket with a rate of 22.5; Chelsea with 22.4; Lawrence with 22.1; Revere with 18.1; Framingham
with 12.5; Everett with 11.9; Wrentham with 12; Lynn with 11.3; Winthrop with 9.5; New Bedford with 9.4; Worcester with 8.9; Saugus with 8.5; Marlboro with 8.4; Holliston with 8.3; and Tyngsboro with 8.3.
Plainville, Monson, Lynnfield and Dedham dropped off the red list, while Holliston and Marlboro were new additions.
Nantucket has suddenly skyrocketed to the top. A report to officials there Wednesday said “large crowds over Labor Day weekend were spreader events.”
Leaders of several others of the commonwealth’s smaller, socioeconomically disadvantaged cities told the Herald last week that the odds are stacked against them, leaving them constantly in the dreaded ‘red zone’ with elevated daily case counts. Everett Mayor Carlo DiMaria last week said the designation was something of a “scarlet letter,” a badge of shame that’s scaring people away from doing business in his city.
The combination of dense, multigenerational housing, large numbers of frontline workers who can’t do their jobs remotely and communities that are historically underserved — often with language barriers — makes it difficult to make large amounts of progress, leaders in Everett, Chelsea, Lynn, Lawrence and more have said.
In the somewhat larger Brockton, which once trailed only Chelsea in case rate, Sullivan credits his city’s tough actions against nighttime parties as a major reason for the decline. He said he ordered several parks closed that had become “hotspots for gatherings and parties,” and the city has a hard 11 p.m. curfew that remains in place in an effort to cut down on the late-night parties.
“We can control our own destiny,” Sullivan said. “The curfew was something that really needed to be done and we really reaped some benefit from it.”