21 new deaths, 216 new cases

Massachusetts health officials on Friday reported 21 more people have died from the coronavirus and there are 216 new cases, as hospitalization rates dip down and three out of six key trends stay in the green.

One key marker in the success of beating down the coronavirus, the seven-day weighted average of the state’s positive test rate, has declined in Massachusetts from 16.6% on May 1 to 1.7% now.

Massachusetts is one of just 18 states that has test positive levels below the World Health Organization’s recommended threshold of 5% this week, a Johns Hopkins University testing tracker shows.

Arizona has the highest test positive rate of any other state according to the tracker, sitting at just over 22%. Florida, at 18% is not far behind and South Carolina is also at nearly 18%.

Friday’s 21 new coronavirus deaths bring Massachusetts’ COVID-19 death toll to 8,184, the state Department of Public Health announced. The three-day average of coronavirus daily deaths has dropped from 161 at the start of May to 15 now.

The state has logged 106,487 total cases of the highly contagious disease, an increase of 216 cases since Thursday.

Of the 106,487 total cases, at least 95,390 people have recovered, a Wednesday public health report showed.

Coronavirus hospitalizations went down by 42 patients since Thursday, bringing the state’s COVID-19 hospitalization total to 515 with 36 patients currently intubated.

The three-day average of the number of coronavirus hospitalizations has gone from 3,707 on May 1 to 551 now and just five hospitals are currently using surge capacity, a decrease from six hospitals earlier this week.

The United States is currently in the midst of some of the worst surges in coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.

More than 3.6 million Americans have been infected, nearly 139,00 have died and about a million have recovered.

Worldwide, the coronavirus case count has hit 13.8 million with 592,000 deaths and 7.7 million recoveries.