Top Boston doctors talk about how hospitals are coping with the surge, herd immunity and a possible new COVID-19 strain dubbed “deltacron” on NBC10 Boston’s weekly “COVID Q&A” series.
Another 18,721 confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in Massachusetts Wednesday, along with 36 new confirmed deaths.
The report from the Department of Public Health pushed the state's number of confirmed COVID-19 to 1,305,830, while the death toll rose to 20,386.
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Massachusetts' COVID metrics, tracked on the Department of Public Health's interactive coronavirus dashboard, dashboard, have been spiking to heights not seen since last winter's surge, thought to be driven at least in part by the omicron variant.
However, cases appear to be declining in the last couple of weeks -- the Department of Public Health reported fewer new confirmed cases than it had the prior two Thursdays, 24,570 on Jan. 6 and 21,137 on Dec. 30, which was a single-day record at the time.
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Massachusetts' seven-day average of positive tests fell from 21.61% Wednesday to 20.34% Thursday. The metric was once above 30%, but had dropped under 0.5% until the delta variant began surging in the state.
The number of patients in Massachusetts hospitals with confirmed COVID-19 cases rose to 3,180, the most since May 8, 2020. The figure reached nearly 4,000 early in the pandemic, but dipped under an average of 85 at one point this July.
Of those currently hospitalized, 1,452 are fully vaccinated, 484 are in intensive care units and 278 are intubated.
More COVID News
Nearly than 13.2 million vaccine doses have now been administered in Massachusetts.
That includes, from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, nearly 5.6 million first shots, more than 4.8 million second shots and over 2.4 million booster shots. There have been more than 336,000 doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered.
Health officials on Thursday reported that a total of 5,142,999 Massachusetts residents have been fully vaccinated.
