More Mass. communities see COVID-19 cases rise
CANTON, Mass. — Most Massachusetts communities can point to a nadir within the pandemic. For Canton, it had been mid-January when the positive test rate soared on the brink of 7.5%.
That was bad enough to brand the Norfolk County suburb, alongside many dozens of other communities at the time, sort of a ‘red zone,’ a designation reserved by the state Department of Public Health for places hardest hit by the virus.
But by late February, the statewide quelling of COVID-19 had been underway for weeks. Canton’s positive test rate dropped by half and therefore the town returned to a yellow status, where it's remained the past few weeks. However, Canton is yellow with a real note of caution, because it is one among a growing list of Massachusetts communities seeing COVID-19 cases slowly increasing.
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“I think that we've noise. So, once you have noise, you've got to take care,” said Dr. Mireya Wessolossky, an communicable disease specialist at UMass Memorial center in Worcester. “What is it? what's that noise? Is it important? Is it rising or down?”
In many communities in Massachusetts, COVID-19 cases are taking place, which is that the trend statewide also.
But over the past few weeks, more towns are reporting higher case numbers and more positive tests. for instance, the last week of February, the state’s weekly public health report showed 46 communities with higher COVID-19 case counts than the previous week. Last week, 113 communities had higher numbers.
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Eighty cities and towns reported a better percentage of COVID-19 tests returning positive fortnight ago. Last week, that figure rose to 105 communities. In some ways, Wessolossky suggested that, while troubling, this is often not surprising.
“We still don’t have the whole population vaccinated, and that we still have activity,” Wessolossky said. “Remember, even one case can infect three-to-five people. If you continue to have cases coming to the hospital if you continue to hear patients are infected, meaning that we don’t have things in check. We are still during a pandemic.”
And there’s little question things are better than they were, Wessolossky said. But better hardly means we’ve bested the virus.
“Right now, we are during a little rise,” she said. “I hope it’s not indicating we’re getting to have a 3rd surge. But we've to be vigilant. we all know that things can happen. As a matter of fact, look what’s happening in Italy. They’re browsing the 3rd wave. Are we getting to have an equivalent thing? I hope not.”
For that to not happen, Wessolossky said, requires following one basic public health principle: containment.
“By staying far away from people once you can spread, wearing a mask, social distancing, those are the items that haven’t changed in 150 years since we’ve known what ‘public health’ is and the way cases can spread,” Wessolossky said.
And she is urging everyone to urge vaccinated once they have the prospect.
What concerns Wessolossky is that the quiet rise in COVID-19 cases is occurring in tandem with the economy opening up more and other states abandoning mask mandates and other preventative measures that public health experts know work.
“We got to be uncomfortable still,” she said. “It’s very uncomfortable to wear a mask, without having the ability to be together with your friends, hug and kiss, etc. I understand that, everybody understands that. But we have a choice. Either you're uncomfortable now, early, for a touch longer. Or you’re just getting to be with this, lingering and lingering and lingering. I prefer the primary version, you know?”
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