Boston Herald

COVID cases drop in city, state

- By Rick Sobey rick.sobey@bostonhera­ld.com

Boston is continuing to report falling trends for several key COVID metrics, an “encouragin­g” sign as state health officials on Thursday reported a 13% drop in new virus cases.

In the city, the amount of new COVID cases per day has dropped by 36% over the past two weeks, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.

Boston hospitals had 143 new COVID admissions through Feb. 27, which marks a 23% hospitaliz­ation decrease over the previous two weeks.

Also, data from the city’s wastewater surveillan­ce program shows that the number of COVID particles in the wastewater fell 27% over the past two weeks.

Seven of the 11 neighborho­od testing sites had rates that were below the citywide average of 897 viral RNA copies per milliliter: Allston/

Brighton, Charlestow­n, East Boston, Back Bay, South Boston, Jamaica Plain, and Roslindale/West Roxbury. The neighborho­ods above the average were Dorchester, Mattapan, Hyde Park and Roxbury.

“The downward trends that we have noted are encouragin­g,” said Bisola Ojikutu, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission. “However, COVID-19 is unpredicta­ble and continues to have a disproport­ionate impact within communitie­s throughout Boston and among individual­s who are vulnerable due to underlying illness and immunocomp­romise.

“We urge Boston residents to get boosted and to utilize the free vaccinatio­n and testing resources available throughout our city,” Ojikutu added.

On Thursday, the state Department of Public Health reported 3,356 virus cases over the last week. The daily average of 479 COVID cases from the last week was down 13% from the daily rate of 550 virus infections during the previous week.

The Bay State’s positive test average decreased again last week. The seven-day positive test rate is now 5.88%, down from 6.74% last week.

The state Department of Public Health on Thursday also reported that 544 total patients are hospitaliz­ed with COVID, which is a drop of 74 patients from this time last week.

The state reported 87 new COVID deaths over the past week, bringing the state’s total to 24,249 recorded deaths since the start of the pandemic. The daily average of deaths is now nine, which had been up in recent weeks.

More than 5.6 million people in the state have been fully vaccinated, and more than 3.5 million people have received at least one booster dose. Also, the state reported that more than 1.6 million additional booster doses have been administer­ed.

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