Throughout June and the beginning of July COVID infections were virtually nonexistent in the neighborhood with an average of 0.10 percent of residents testing positive week after week.
However, with new variants of the virus penetrating the US, Charlestown is not immune to the recent spikes in cases that are sweeping the US and infecting unvaccinated people with avengence.
According to the weekly report released last Friday released by the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), 336 residents were tested and 2.7 percent were found to be positive–a huge increase considering no one tested positive for the virus for two consecutive weeks according to the BPHC’s June 25 report.
According to the weekly report, of the 16,274 Charlestown residents tested for the virus since the pandemic began 8.7 percent were found to be positive by last Friday. This was a 1.1 percentage decrease from the 8.8 percent reported by the BPHC on June 25.
Citywide, the weekly positive test rate increased. According to the BPHC 11,704 residents were tested and 1.5 percent were COVID positive–this was a 275 percent increase from the 0.4 percent reported by the BPHC on June 25.
The BPHC data released last Friday showed Charlestown’s infection rate was 726.2 cases per 10,000 residents–up 0.43 percent from the 723.1 cases per 10,000 residents reported on June 25.
Six additional Charlestown residents tested positive for the virus since June 25 and the number of positive cases increased to 1,410 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 0.6 percent since July 9 and went from 70,998 cases to 71,457 confirmed cases in a week. Two additional Boston residents died from the virus in the past two weeks and there are now 1,395 total deaths in the city from COVID.