City has slight improvement in virus stats
Walsh still mum about new job
Mayor Martin Walsh — who again wouldn’t take questions from the press — said Boston’s coronavirus numbers show some positive signs as the city is expecting more vaccines en route from the state.
Walsh, speaking in a press conference in City Hall, noted that the seven-day average positive COVID-19 test rate has dropped from 8.7% last week to 7.5% this week. That’s still well above the “threshold for concern” of 5%, but it’s a break from the concerning weekslong increasing trend.
“We’ve seen the positive rates go down in almost every single neighborhood as well, which is encouraging to see,” Walsh said. “We’re seeing improvements in our numbers as they stabilize. But we know that this can change at any time.”
Walsh noted that city data shows that 99% of all adult hospital beds are full, but he said coronavirus admissions are down slightly from last week.
Boston Health Chief Marty Martinez said “it’s clear that hospitals are tight on beds and tight on capacity.”
But, “the overwhelming majority of patients and the increase in patients over the last couple of weeks really has been non-COVID patients. We right now have around 380 COVID positive patients in our Boston hospitals, which is down from maybe 450, 460, about 10 days ago. So we definitely have seen the COVID numbers improve, which is which is a good thing.”
Martinez said the state has told Boston that the amount of vaccine doses coming from the feds through them and to the city “hopefully will be increased over the next couple of weeks.”
Walsh also announced that the Congressional Medal of Honor Society will hold its annual convention in Boston this year. He said it’ll be the fourth time that’s happened, the most of any city, when the convention happens in September.
But then the mayor wouldn’t take questions, as was the case for the one other time he gave a press conference in the weeks since President Biden picked him to head the U.S. Department of Labor. Walsh remains mayor until the U.S. Senate takes up the nomination and confirms him, at which point he’ll depart.
In the first press conference he scurried away as his lieutenants spoke, leaving them to take questions, but this time Walsh remained off to the side and referred questions to Martinez, even when asked directly about the vaccine dose Walsh received this week.
Walsh’s fellow Cabinet nominee just south of the border, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, also hasn’t been answering questions from the press.
The city on Friday saw 485 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 50,325, but no new deaths. A total of 1,113 Boston residents have died of the highly contagious disease, according to city data.