It’s a good thing the City’s new mask mandate policy for indoor venues went into effect last Friday because East Boston’s COVID numbers increased dramatically between August 23 and August 30.
City health officials are scrambling to knock down the highly contagious Delta variant of the COVID virus here and across Boston as infections among the unvaccinated and breakthrough infections among the vaccinated continue to climb.
Ahead of the new mask mandate Eastie’s weekly positive COVID test rate decreased 14 percent between August 16 and August 23 but skyrocketed last week.
Last week, 1509 Eastie residents were tested for the virus last week and 4.4 percent were positive–this was a 47 percent increase from the 3 percent reported by the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) on August 23.
Of the 47,460 Eastie residents tested for COVID since the pandemic began, 16.9 percent overall were found to be positive for the virus. This was a decrease of 0.59 percent from the 17 percent reported by the BPHC two weeks ago.
Citywide, the weekly positive test rate decreased 10 percent last week. According to the BPHC 22,636 residents were tested and 3.6 percent were COVID positive–this was a 3 percent increase from the 3.5 percent reported by the BPHC on August 23.
Eastie’s COVID infection rate increased only 0.57 percent and the rate went from 1,694.9 cases per 10,000 residents to 1,706.6 cases per 10,000 residents.
Fifty-five additional residents contracted the virus between August 23 and August 30 and there have been 8,009 confirmed cases in the neighborhood since the start of the pandemic.
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 increased 1.3 percent since August 23 and went from 74,940 cases to 75,888 confirmed cases in a week. There were three additional deaths in Boston from the virus in the past two weeks and the total COVID deaths is now at 1,406.