Perhaps the City’s new mask mandate policy for indoor venues that went into effect two weeks ago is having some impact on stopping the spread of the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus in Charlestown and throughout the city as some neighborhoods have seen a decline in cases last week.
Ahead of the mask mandate, Charlestown’s weekly positive COVID test rate spiked 31.4 percent between August 16 and August 23 and another 2 percent between August 23 and August 30. Charlestown was second only to Roxbury in the percentage of people testing positive during that time period.
However, the numbers have begun to trend downward.
According to the weekly report released Monday by the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), 734 Charlestown residents were tested and 3.5 percent were found to be positive–a 25.5 percent decrease from the 4.7 percent that tested positive between August 23 and August 30.
According to the weekly report, of the 17,796 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 30..
Citywide, the weekly positive test rate decreased about 3 percent last week. According to the BPHC 22,466 residents were tested and 3.5 percent were COVID positive–this was a 2.7 percent increase from the 3.6 percent reported by the BPHC on August 30.
Twenty-six additional Charlestown residents tested positive for the virus since August 23 and the number of positive cases increased to 1,555 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 1.5 percent since August 30 and went from 75,888 cases to 77,015 confirmed cases in a week. There were five additional deaths in Boston from the virus in the past week and the total COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic is at 1,411.