East Boston now officially has the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the City of Boston according to new data released by the Boston Public Health Commission on Friday.
While the number of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 continue to decline in the city and state, East Boston still remains a virus hotspot within the city limits and cases of the virus rose five percent in one week.
On Friday the BPHC released its weekly COVID-19 stats by neighborhood that tracks infection rates and COVID testing results in Boston neighborhoods.
In one week Eastie’s COVID-19 infection rate rose five percent from 295.6 cases per 10,000 residents to an infection rate of 310.5 cases per 10,000 residents as of Friday.
As of Friday there were 1,457 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Eastie, up from the 1,387 cases reported by the BPHC the previous week.
Last week, 4,601 Eastie residents were tested for COVID-19 and the data shows that 32.5 percent of those tested were COVID positive. Eastie still leads the city in the percentage of those testing positive for COVID-19 followed by parts of Dorchester, Mattapan and Hyde Park.
The statistics released by the BPHC as part of its weekly COVID-19 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.
Eastie now leads Hyde Park as the neighborhood with the highest infection rate in the city. Hyde Park’s infection rate rose only three percent and was 308.6 cases per 10,000 residents.
Eastie also still leads the city in the number of positive infections with 400 more cases than Hyde Park.
Citywide there have been 12,784 positive cases of coronavirus, up only two percent from the 12,511 cases reported last week. So far 7,009 of these 12,784 residents have fully recovered.
Deaths from COVID-19 rose only 3.8 percent from 618 deaths to the 642 deaths reported last week.