Positive COVID Tests Increase in the Area

It’s a good thing the City’s new mask mandate policy for indoor venues went into effect last Friday because Charlestown’s COVID numbers have been steadily increasing and went up another two percent between August 23 and August 30.

City health officials are scrambling to knock down the highly contagious Delta variant of the COVID virus here and across Boston as infections among the unvaccinated and breakthrough infections among the vaccinated continue to climb.

Ahead of the new mask mandate Charlestown’s weekly positive COVID test rate increased 31.4 percent between August 16 and August 23. The neighborhood experienced a 40 percent increase for the previous week ending August 13.

According to the weekly report released last Friday released by the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), 654 Charlestown residents were tested and 4.7 percent were found to be positive–a 2 percent increase from the 4.6 percent that tested positive between August 23 and August 30.

Charlestown is now right behind Roxbury as the largest percentage of positive cases among those tested in any Boston neighborhood between August 23 and August 30. Roxbury’s weekly positive test rate was 5.5 percent last week.

According to the weekly report, of the 17,498 Charlestown residents tested for the virus since the pandemic began 8.8 percent were found to be positive. This was the same percentage reported by the BPHC on August 23.

Citywide, the weekly positive test rate decreased 10 percent last week. According to the BPHC 22,636 residents were tested and 3.6 percent were COVID positive–this was a 3 percent increase from the 3.5 percent reported by the BPHC on August 23.

Twenty-eight additional Charlestown residents tested positive for the virus since August 23 and the number of positive cases increased to 1,529 overall since the start of the pandemic.

The statistics released by the BPHC as part of its weekly COVID19 report breaks down the number of cases and infection rates in each neighborhood. It also breaks down the number of cases by age, gender and race.

Citywide positive cases of coronavirus increased 1.3 percent since August 23 and went from  74,940 cases to 76,036 confirmed cases in a week. There were three additional deaths in Boston from the virus in the past two weeks and the total COVID deaths is now at 1,406.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.