Framingham remains one of only eight Covid-19 ‘red zone’ communities in the state as the city’s known new infections rate per 100,000 people rose to 10.9, according to data released Wednesday by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Test positivity jumped to 3.46%, up from 2.8% the prior week.
If Framingham was a U.S. state with those numbers, residents would be required to quarantine before traveling to Massachusetts, since both known infections and positivity are higher than Rhode Island’s.
“We’re continuing to see the double-digit increases over a couple of days, and that’s concerning,” Alexandra DePalo, Framingham’s assistant director of public health, told the MetroWest Daily News.
Below is a graph of actual average daily cases in the last seven days (not per 100,000 people) as of Sept. 2:
Framingham’s known new cases per capita are more than 2.5 times the Massachusetts average, and its test positivity rate was triple the state-wide number.
The state uses average daily reported cases over the most recent 14 days to categorize communities as grey (best), green, yellow, and red. Unfortunately, it does not include positivity rates as part of those calculations.
A rate of more than 8 known daily new infections per 100,000 people classifies a community as in the red zone.