Record Number of New COVID-19 Cases Reported in Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has released the latest COVID-19 case numbers for the state.

– Quincy Massachusetts News from Quincy Quarry News.

Drive-up COVID-19 testing
A Laura Owens Lambert/Patriot Ledger image

Record Number of New COVID-19 Cases Reported in Massachusetts.

Specifically, a record number of new 6,787 cases reported on a single day would appear to have been set on December 28 per a visual review of charts found here.  Additionally, 81 deaths were cited; however, on what day these deaths occurred was not made clear.

Also disconcerting, the latest weekly COVID-19 from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health was fraught with other breaking badly bad news©.

For example, the number of COVID-19 screening test takings cratered on December 30 and December 31.  Accordingly, the compiled data in the Department of Public Health Department’s most recent weekly COVID-19 weekly update report released during the day on New Year’s Eve might not present data that accurately represent actual new infection levels.

Quincy Quarry’s quant working remotely
A 123RF image

In particular, while Quincy Quarry’s chief quant has New Year’s weekend off and thus will have to sober up enough to work on Monday, his intern suspects that Quincy’s most recent reported 14 day average of new cases per 100,000 might be an undercounting of the actual number of new cases given declines in testing in the days leading up to Christmas.

Unfortunately, as no one working in Quincy’s City Hall over the long New Year’s holiday weekend nor is anyone readily accessible at the COVID-19 data unit at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Quincy Quarry could not reach out for comment on the suspected anomalies and thus concerns with at least some of the reported data.

Regardless of the appearance of potential undercounting, Quincy continues to still be solidly in Code Red COVID-19 risk status. 

That and Quincy concurrently experienced an arguably incongruous 26% increase in the local testing positive ratio among total tests actually administered even if the average daily count of confirmed new cases locally dropped by an all but insignificant 1.4% drop from last week’s reported 51.4 cases per 100,000 to 50.6 per 100,000 per this week’s Massachusetts Department of Public Health weekly COVID-19 update.

Needless to say, Quincy Quarry’s ever-growing legions of loyal readers can rest assured that the Quarry will continue to monitor the situation and then report on it as might be appropriate.

Source: 6,887 new COVID-19 cases, 81 additional deaths reported in Mass.

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