Massachusetts on Friday reported another 677 coronavirus cases and 14 new deaths.
This puts the state's COVID-19 cases at 1,548,4164. The death toll is currently recorded at 22,980, though state officials have announced they are changing reporting requirements on deaths, a revision that will drop that number by more than 3,000.
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It was just two months ago that Massachusetts' COVID metrics, tracked on the Department of Public Health's interactive coronavirus dashboard was tracking case counts in the thousands rather than hundreds. State health officials reported a single-day record on Jan. 5, topping 27,000 cases, followed by the second-highest single-day total on Jan. 7, with more than 26,000 cases.
The 7-day average test positivity came in at 1.67% Friday, compared to 1.6% reported Thursday.
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There were 259 COVID-19 hospitalizations reported Friday with 37 patients in intensive care and 16 patients intubated.
The state has started releasing a new breakdown of virus hospitalizations, data that indicates whether COVID-19 is the primary cause of hospitalization, or incidental. This data shows that from Jan. 13 to Feb. 7, roughly 50% of COVID-19 patients were primary cases. On March 10, 34% of COVID-19 hospitalizations were primary cases.
As recently as Jan. 14 there were 3,300 patients in hospitals. The worst period in the pandemic for hospitalizations continues to be April 2020, when nearly 4,000 people with COVID were in Massachusetts hospitals.
More COVID news
More than 14 million vaccine doses have now been administered in Massachusetts. That includes over 5.8 million first doses of either Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, 4.96 million second shots, and over 341,000 Johnson & Johnson one-dose shots. More than 2.87 million booster shots have been administered.
Health officials on Friday reported that a total of 5,303,267 Massachusetts residents have been fully vaccinated.
