Every week the MA Dept. of Public Health releases numbers for how COVID-19 has impacted the state, and we try to highlight some of these numbers so the community is informed about how COVID is impacting Lynn & the state. Their numbers factor in the past week as well as the week before, giving 2 weeks worth of data.

The City of Lynn is dealing with a serious surge of COVID-19 cases. On Dec. 2nd we broke the 24-hr new case record with 169 cases, before it was shattered the next day with 191 cases on December 4th. On Wednesday this week the record was broken again with 196 new cases. It has not been uncommon to see anywhere from 30-80 new cases a day in Lynn, but it had rarely gone above that in recent months. We have seen a steady increase of new cases since the end of October, but in good news deaths related to COVID-19 seem to have slowed in the city with only 10 deaths reported in November.

The average daily incidence rate per 100,000 for Lynn over 14 days this week was 89.19;  the previous 4 weeks were 67.6, 61.6, 45.1, & 34.4. The positivity rate this week was 12.27%; the previous 4 weeks were 10.23% 9.14%, 7.48%, & 6.53%. It is important to note that while testing numbers are currently high this does not mean that case numbers will go up simply because of that, the number to watch is the positivity rate. The higher the positivity rate the more the virus is spreading, regardless of number of tests. In just 1 week Lynn’s positivity rate increased by 2%, and Lynn’s numbers are among the worst in the state.

The outlook for the nation is not much better. The United States currently has 15.7 million cases, with 1 million reported cases a week being the norm for sveral weeks. Daily records have been broken for new cases & deaths within 24 hours constantly over the past month. Amid a stretch of record-breaking days where daily deaths topped out near 3,000 the United States broke the one-day record on Wednesday with 3,157 dead. This is more than were lost on D-Day, 9/11, or Pearl Harbor. The death toll in the US now sits at approx. 293K, more than 1 person every 30 seconds. A report from the CDC last week predicts 9,500-19,500 new deaths likely the week of Christmas.

Back in MA there are currently 157 communities in the red category & 92 in the yellow category in Massachusetts. Last week there were 138 in the yellow & 97 in the red and three weeks ago there were 140 communities in the yellow category & 62 in the red, last week due to the holiday we did not provide a summary. Given the sudden spike in communities designated in the red category it is safe to assume that the virus is spreading rapidly throughou the state.

Communities with populations less than 10,000 residents, between 10,000 & 50,000 residents, & more than 50,000 residents have had new metrics applied to them. Their results fall into 4 color categories; grey, green, yellow, & red. Positivity rates & average daily cases will continue to be determined by two-week rolling average. Officials say the new categories help to make the community-specific data more nuanced, and better account for increases in cases in smaller communities. They will also incorporate examples where cases at colleges, nursing homes, or jails may push an entire community into the red category. The new metrics are as follows:

Below are the statistics for Lynn & the state.