The latest weekly Covid-19 numbers are out from Mass Dept of Public Health. Framingham’s rate of known new Covid-19 cases rose to 9.8 per 100,000 for the 14-day period ending March 26. That’s up from 6.7 the prior week.
You can see more local data in my Framingham Covid-19 data app.
Positivity was 1.98%.
Things are ticking up, so current infection rate is likely higher. And as we all know, reported tests are a small percent of total known positives since so many people are testing at home – although number of tests administered in Framingham actually went up compared with the prior week.
If you are at high risk and paying attention to several experts’ suggested metric of 50 total cases in a week as being reasonably safe for one-way masking indoors (that is, you’re wearing a high-quality mask but others aren’t), that’s around a rate of 7. Framingham is higher than that again.
The metric makes a lot of mathematical assumptions, such as 2 out of every 3 cases are missed in the official numbers but some people who aren’t in the data are nevertheless isolating from others. It’s worth reading this in full if this is important to you.
For those who consider wastewater sampling to be the most reliable these days because official numbers are missing so many home tests, the MWRA South region (including Framingham) 7-day average is at its highest level since mid-February.
The 30-day dailies are noticeably ticking up as well.