Hospitalizations, deaths climb

Also on Monday, the state again reported an uptick in coronavirus-related hospitalizations. The number increased by 11 over the weekend, bringing the state to 195 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19.

The state hasn’t seen that many hospitalized coronavirus patients at once in more than four months. Hospitalizations peaked in April at near 2,000.

A total of 12 additional people also died with COVID-19, the state reported Monday, for a total of 4,554 deaths since the pandemic began.

With the newly reported deaths, the state has now reported more deaths in October — which is only two-thirds of the way through — than it reported in either of the previous two months.

In the month of August, the state reported a total 33 coronavirus-related deaths. That number increased to 43 in the month of September. And so far in October, the state has already reported 46 coronavirus-related deaths this month.

After recording unusually high rates of positive coronavirus tests above 2% last week, the state’s rate on Monday dropped slightly. A total of 1,191 cases were identified out of 71,905 tests — for a positivity rate of about 1.7%.

With the tests reported Monday, the state has now administered more than 2 million tests since the pandemic began.

Across the country, more than 8.2 million people have contracted COVID19 and 220,046 have died of the illness, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.