Massachusetts health officials reported Friday that 21 more people have died from the coronavirus and there are 216 new cases, as hospitalization rates decline and three of the six key trends remain green.
A key marker in the success of defeating the coronavirus, the seven-day weighted average of the state’s positive test rate has decreased in Massachusetts from 16.6% on May 1 to 1.7% now.
Massachusetts is one of 18 states to have positive test levels below the World Health Organization recommended threshold of 5% this week, a Johns Hopkins University test tracker shows.
Arizona has the highest positive test rate of any other state according to the tracker, at just over 22%. Florida, with 18%, is not far behind and South Carolina also has almost 18%.
Friday’s 21 new coronavirus deaths raised Massachusetts’ number of COVID-19 deaths to 8,184, the state Department of Public Health announced. The three-day average of daily coronavirus deaths has decreased from 161 in early May to 15 now.
The state has recorded 106,487 total cases of the highly contagious disease, an increase of 216 cases since Thursday.
Of the total 106,487 cases, at least 95,390 people have recovered, a public health report Wednesday showed.
Coronavirus hospitalizations decreased by 42 patients since Thursday, bringing the state’s total COVID-19 hospitalizations to 515, with 36 patients currently intubated.
The three-day average number of coronavirus hospitalizations has gone from 3,707 on May 1 to 551 now and only five hospitals are using the increase capacity, a decrease from six hospitals earlier this week.
The United States is currently in the midst of some of the worst waves of coronavirus cases since the pandemic began. More than 3.6 million Americans have been infected, nearly 139.00 have died and about one million have recovered.
Globally, the coronavirus case count has reached 13.8 million with 592,000 deaths and 7.7 million recoveries.
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