Framingham remains a designated Covid-19 high-risk “red zone”, but the city’s rates of known new infections improved to 11.6 per 100,000 over the most recent 14 days. That’s down from 15.3 last week.
Test positivity rates also declined again, to 2.17%, according to data released by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health today.
In fact, Framingham’s rate was lower than the state-wide average of 11.8 per 100,000 people, putting the entire Commonwealth firmly in Gov. Baker’s red zone. The Baker administration still only looks at known new cases per 100K and not testing positivity rates or testing per capita when determining red-zone designations.
Number of tests administered in Framingham were roughly similar this week vs. last.
A couple of MetroWest communities now report higher new infection and positivity rates than Framingham: Marlborough, at 12.3 per 100K and 2.7%; and Ashland, at 12.8 per 100K and 2.63%.
State scale: Gray, less than 5 reported cases in the last 14 days; Green, less than 4 cases per 100,000 population; Yellow, 4-8 cases per 100,000 population; Red, more than 8 cases per 100,000 population.
Framingham still qualifies for free Covid-19 testing. The drive-in testing site at Walsh Middle School runs through this Saturday. Starting Monday, Nov. 2, there will be drive-in testing at a new location: TJX offices on Rte. 30 (770 Cochituate Road), Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Anyone is eligible, no appointment or insurance is needed.
The state-wide Covid rate of more than 10 known new infections per 100K has placed Massachusetts on Connecticut’s quarantine list. Anyone coming from MA who stays in CT for more than 24 hours must fill out a travel form and self quarantine for 14 days.
New York State now “strongly discourages” travel to and from Massachusetts. While MA meets NY’s quarantine threshold, it is New York policy not to require quarantines for border states.
The website CovidExitStrategy.org downgraded Massachusetts from “trending poorly” to “uncontrolled spread”, its lowest rating.
Source: CovidExitStrategy.org
While Massachusetts known cases and positivity rates are still lower than many other states, our estimated “R0”, or re-infection rate, is among the highest in the U.S. CovidActNow estimates it at 1.2, which means each infected person spreads it to an average of 1.2 other people.
That might not sound like a lot, but the difference between 1.0 (cases stay stable) and 1.2 is actually quite substantial. One researcher explained that a reinfection rate of 1.11 (the U.S. average) would cause cases to double in about five weeks.
Note that R0 is only an estimation. And Covid-19 seems to spread in such a way that many ill people don’t spread it to anyone else at all, while a few people infect many others in so-called “super spreader” events. (Another metric, called k, measures whether spreading tends to be generally the same among all sick people or highly dissimilar)
See more Covid-19 coverage at http://www.district2framingham.com/tags/covid19/.
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