With a new school year in full swing, a large percentage of students under the age of 12 still unvaccinated and the Delta variant of the COVID 19 virus still raging, it’s no surprise that East Boston’s weekly positive test rate increased nearly 60 percent last week.
Between August 30 and September 6 Eastie’s weekly positive COVID test rate declined 32 percent but since September 6 the neighborhood has emerged as having one of the highest positive test rates in Boston just behind Dorchester and South Boston.
Last week, 1,472 Eastie residents were tested for the virus last week and 4.7 percent were positive–this was a 57 percent increase from the 3 percent reported by the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) on September 6.
Of the 49,247 Eastie residents tested for COVID since the pandemic began, 16.6 percent overall were found to be positive for the virus. This was a decrease of 2.4 percent from the 17 percent reported by the BPHC last week.
Citywide, the weekly positive test rate increased nearly 3 percent last week. According to the BPHC 22,313 residents were tested and 3.6 percent were COVID positive–this was a 2.85 percent increase from the 3.5 percent reported by the BPHC on Sept. 6.
Eastie’s COVID infection rate increased only 0.78 percent and the rate went from 1,720.9 cases per 10,000 residents to 1,734.4 cases per 10,000 residents.
Sixty-three additional residents contracted the virus between Sept. 6 and Sept. 13 and there have been 8,076 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 1.8 percent since Sept. 6 and went from 76,186 cases to 77,549 confirmed cases in a week. There were six additional deaths in Boston from the virus in the past week and the total COVID deaths remains at 1,412.