Another 24,570 confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in Massachusetts Thursday, along with 43 new confirmed deaths.
The report from the Department of Public Health pushed the state's number of confirmed COVID-19 to 1,159,950, while the death toll rose to 20,051.
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Thursday's single-day total is shy of the record, set on Wednesday, by 3,042 cases, though it's still the second-highest single-day total in Massachusetts of the pandemic so far.
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.
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Massachusetts' seven-day average of positive tests rose from 22.06% Wednesday to 22.43% Thursday, the highest it's been since April 23, 2020. 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 2,524, the most since May 17, 2020, and the first time the hospitalization figure is higher than last winter's peak. 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, 973 are fully vaccinated, 416 are in intensive care units and 259 are intubated.
More COVID News
More than 12.9 million vaccine doses have now been administered in Massachusetts.
That includes, from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, shy of 5.6 million first shots, nearly 4.8 million second shots and over 2.2 million booster shots. There have been more than 335,000 doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered.
Health officials on Thursday reported that a total of 5,109,019 Massachusetts residents have been fully vaccinated.
