COVID-19 infections are once again on the rise in East Boston according to the latest data released by the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC).
While Eastie’s COVID-19 positive test rate was decreasing steadily for the past few weeks, the numbers have once again exploded in the neighborhood and increased 120 percent since last week, fulfilling the prophecy of health care experts that a citywide spike would occur.
Of the 19,730 Eastie residents tested for COVID last week 11.9 percent were found to be positive for the virus, a 120 percent increase from the 5.4 percent reported two weeks ago. Overall since the pandemic began 13.6 percent of Eastie residents here have been found to be positive.
The numbers posted last Friday are slightly above the 11.8 percent positive test rate reported back in August, which at the time was considered an ‘all time high’ for the neighborhood. However, efforts by the city and health officials at the time brought that number down to 5.1 percent before the end of the summer.
The citywide positive test rate was up 38 percent and went from 4.5 percent of Boston residents testing positive for the virus to 6.2 percent.
Eastie’s infection rate rose by 3.35 percent according to the data released by the BPHC last Friday. Eastie’s COVID infection rate went from 538.7 cases per 10,000 residents to 556.8 cases per 10,000 residents. The last increase two weeks ago was 2.6 percent. The citywide average is 281.3 cases per 10,000 residents and Eastie still has one of the highest infection rates in all of Boston.
The statistics released by the BPHC as part of its weekly COVID19 report breaks down the number of cases and infection rates in each neighborhood. It also breaks down the number of cases by age, gender and race.
Citywide positive cases of coronavirus rose by 4.8 percent last week from 18,834 cases to 19,754 confirmed cases. So far 16,986 Boston residents have fully recovered from the virus and 6 additional Boston residents died last week–bringing the total number of fatalities in the city remains to 777.